How To Escape Poverty

Photo of a line of poor African-Americans standing in a soup line in front of a billboard showing happy white people in a car, with the words, "WORLD'S HIGHEST STANDARD OF LIVING: There's no way like the American way"

1: Never spend any money.

The fundamental cause of poverty is that businesses pay their uncredentialed employees as little as possible while charging their customers as much as possible. This puts the lowest paid workers between a rock and a hard place. It’s going to cost money to buy the credentials that will let you through the glass ceiling. So if you can’t get a better paying job with your current credentials, you’re going to have to save money by not spending any. Here are a few tips for not spending money:

Never do anything fun that costs money. Never go to restaurants, movie theaters, concerts, nightclubs or take vacations.

Don’t buy household goods you don’t absolutely need.

Don’t have children.

Don’t date someone who expects you to spend money on them.

Don’t buy designer status symbols to impress other people.

Spend enough money on a vehicle that is reliable, but don’t buy a fancy car that will impress other people.

Take a motorcycle safety course. Even if you never ride a motorcycle you could save 15% on your car insurance if you show your insurance company that you’ve taken a motorcycle safety course.

Eat healthily, exercise and brush your teeth twice a day. The leading cause of bankruptcy is medical bills. You can do a lot to prevent them by living a healthy lifestyle.

Don’t smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol or use illegal drugs. These are expensive and unnecessary, and being inebriated will make you not notice how much your life really sucks, making it harder to escape poverty.

Spend as little on rent as possible. Rent a room instead of a house, or live out of a van.


2: Get a piece of paper.

It’s nearly impossible to earn a living wage without paper credentials. Even if you work at a business for 20 years you probably won’t get promoted without having a piece of paper that says you’re worthy of a promotion. If you’re not academically inclined enough to get a college degree, then get a trade certificate. There are a lot of certificates that cost less than $10,000 and take a year or less to get that will allow you to make $30+ per hour. If you can get a certificate that allows you to work at sea, you can make even more money by not having to pay rent. Every piece of paper helps even if it’s just a forklift operator’s license. You can also increase your pay by learning a second language.


3: Start your own business.

The most lucrative way to make money is to start your own business. It requires intelligence to jump through all the bureaucratic hoops and hurdles governments put in the way of entrepreneurs, but you don’t need a college degree to successfully open a small business. You just need a little intelligence and a lot of tenacity.

If you’re poor, you won’t be able to open your own car dealership or some other business that requires a lot of startup capital, but there are plenty of opportunities for starting businesses providing goods and services that don’t require tens of thousands of dollars to get off the ground. Look around you and find a need that’s not being met and find a way to fill it that requires as little money as possible to produce and deliver.


4: Join the military.

If you’re young and don’t have a criminal record or any disabilities, you might consider joining the military. There are a lot of jobs in the military that will never put you in the line of fire. Plus, you’ll get free healthcare, free dental care, free life insurance, free housing, free tuition assistance, free gyms, free job training, free food, free legal representation and lucrative enlistment/reenlistment bonuses. And you can enjoy all these benefits while congratulating yourself for sacrificing more than the civilian wage slaves who pay your salary. Granted, you’ll help defend the economic and political systems that are taking away civilians’ freedoms and privacy while causing apocalyptic economic inequality, but the indoctrination process you’ll go through in basic training will brainwash you into believing the opposite. Once you stop questioning your leaders and their propaganda, the contradiction of your role won’t bother you anymore.


5: Demand poverty reform.

Politicians could put caps on the profits companies make and the amount of money individuals are allowed to hoard, which will eliminate the motivation CEOs have to underpay and overcharge their workers. Politicians could nationalize the banks, which will allow them to set interests rates at reasonable levels and use the profits banks do make on improving the lives of the working poor. Politicians could make higher education free, which will shatter the glass ceiling that keeps the poor from getting the credentials to earn a living wage. Politicians could raise the minimum wage to above poverty levels, but politicians are ultimately answerable to the ultra-wealthy individuals who fund their (and their competitors’) campaigns. So they have more motivation to help their benefactors get richer at the expense of the poor than they do to save the poor from their financial oppressors, but the more the poor speak up, the more their supposed representatives in government will have to listen to them. If you’re not making any noise, then you’re a part of the problem.


If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

Predatory Capitalism Creates Poverty
Socialism and Communism
The Life of the Rich
The Life of the Poor
Oppression in the Workplace
Success and Retirement
The Housing Market
Healthcare in America
The Stock Market
Fixing the Economy
My Tweets About Economics

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