Abolishing poverty

I notice that at the G8 meetings in Scotland there are two main agenda items: eliminating poverty and global warming. The U.S. has already made it pretty clear they aren't very interested in global warming (they seem doubtful even now that it actually exists, but still claim that it ought to be studied). Bush has already indicated that as far as he is concerned the planet is less important than corporate profits. He no doubt still believes we need more research on whether or not the earth is flat, or whether dinosaurs actually existed, or whether evolution truly occurred, or if the Rapture is coming sooner rather than later.

But it is the question of eliminating poverty that has captured my attention for the moment. Now, assuming that anyone actually had the will to eliminate poverty, how would one go about it. I do not mean to sound pessimistic. It is not pessimism that motivates me but, rather, what could you actually do to eliminate poverty. I don't mean how you could alleviate poverty by just giving people more money. I mean how could you actually eliminate it? This seems to me a virtually insurmountable problem. First, would you not have to eliminate large numbers of people? That is, there is a growing problem of overpopulation. I guess you might attack this by some kind of world-wide mandatory birth control measures. Seems unlikely, especially with the Bush/Cheney people involved. There is also the problem of too many people living in areas of the globe that are unable to adequately support them. So either you would have to move huge numbers of people from places like the Sudan to Southern California or where? This seems even more unlikely. Then, if you arranged for a lot of ignorant people to have more money how do you know they would use it wisely? So there would have to be a monumental educational program (probably mandatory) to make sure people didn't spend their money foolishly, like buying food instead of cigarettes and beer. You would also have to eliminate capitalism, or at least have so many controls on it it would no longer resemble capitalism. Then, too, you would have to eliminate greed, a pretty basic human failing. Finally, for the moment at least (I may have to come back to this later), your would have to eliminate class, caste, unequally distributed ability, geographical advantages, quirks of nature, and who knows what all else. Indeed, you would probably have to genetically modify humans so that no one had an advantage over anyone else (poverty, remember, is a purely relative matter). I am personally filthy rich compared to most of the earth's population but I am poor as hell compared to those with money. My wife tells me there are people who have worked on eliminating poverty for years who have answers to questions about how to do it. I believe they have questions about it. I doubt they have answers beyond universal employment, health care for all, a chicken in every pot, two cars in every garage, and so on. She gave me some web sites to examine. I'll get back to you. In the meantime don't expect anything from G8.