Why does poverty exist, and how do we solve it?

Two questions, same answer: You

Poverty exists because of you, and the only way we solve it is through you.

Because you tolerate poverty - the struggles of children and adults in your town or region, because you don’t care enough to end that suffering - you cause it. 

Poverty is not a matter of resources. We throw out more food every day in every town than we need to feed people who are hungry there. We have plenty of vacant spaces to house people who want to be housed. We have enough understanding of what causes violence and how violence occurs to interrupt it if we put adequate resources and thought into it.

We know which schools have a majority of their children reading well below grade level. Are you willing to channel some of your resources where they would be most helpful and not expect that tax dollars will solve the problem? They have not yet done that for the past hundred years and there is nothing to suggest they will solve it in the next hundred years.

Instead, ending poverty is simply a matter of your compassion - how much you have for your neighbors. Not your spoken compassion; what you are willing to do in your community. That’s it.

This plan can help. If you intend to end poverty, let that be your personal or company‘s intention. Let that be your faith community’s intention. Whatever you decide to do, success will come when you have that intention.

Take action with the outcome in mind and accept only that outcome. Then, stay engaged until that outcome is achieved. That is the compassion we need. It is the compassion you need from yourself. It means being fully human.

That is when we will end poverty and see what’s next for us as a people.

But until we get it right, what’s next will always be living at our lowest common denominator instead of our highest potential.