"Don’t Ask Why People Are Poor,
Ask Why They’re Wealthy"
By John Wilder
"I find it sort of hilarious that economists spend a lot of time fretting about what causes poverty. I love economics, but often think that they create pocket universes to study that have no real connection to the here and now. I think that’s called sniffing their own...uh...emissions. But sometimes it’s not just economists who ask the wrong question. As bad as they are, the worst offenders are politicians. Let’s start with the dumbest question that has been asked in my lifetime (at least in the United States): “What causes poverty?” That’s letting Whoopi Goldberg loose in a chocolate factory stupid. It doesn’t help the chocolate and leaves Whoopi sticky and needing an insulin shot.
But why is that a stupid question? Because poverty is the dominant condition of humanity everywhere since we didn’t have two rocks to fight over. People throughout history have been devastatingly, living in mud hut, sleeping in straw beds filled with more bedbugs than straw. Mary and Joseph had to walk uphill, both ways, to get to the manger.
Only in rare times, and only for a small percentage of the population of the world have some humans felt prosperity. Fewer still have felt prosperity for most of their lives. Fewer still experienced enough wealth in their society for them to think that wealth was normal, and poverty was the exception. We call them Pampered Coastal Elite Leftists.
Why? Because every farmer in the Midwest, every rancher in the High Plains, and every shrimper in the Gulf (among many, many others) knows how close they are to failure, and how close poverty is, especially if a free-range Whoopi Goldberg is free to eat and trample their crops.
Ma Wilder was impacted by the Depression (she was a lot older than my biological Mom, I was adopted) to the point that, living up on Wilder Mountain she’d save aluminum foil and old pickle jars and have enough food for six months because, “You just never know when you’ll need it.” It was kinda cute until she made us re-use Q-Tips®.
The Wolf is always at the door. So, the question to ask isn’t “what makes people poor”. We can see that as all the systems around us break down like they are now when morons are at the helm. We should ask the important question: “What makes us wealthy?”
That’s a much better question to ask, since LBJ’s War on Poverty has just subsidized being poor and created a permanent underclass of voters for Leftists to farm, dependent on the Left for a constant stream of handouts. If you were late to Leftist language class, that’s their word for “compassion”.
So, what makes us wealthy? I can only go from history in those places where the world has deviated from the “nasty, brutish, and short” version of life to that “shining city on the hill”. What matters? The first thing that comes to mind is Liberty, tempered with Virtue.
Liberty is important, but Virtue tempers Liberty and creates a boundary, otherwise Opium and Fentanyl Den™ would be the new Waffle House®. Or is that the existing Waffle House© after 2am?
What Liberty does is provides options, for millions of people to make individual decisions on how to better serve fellow citizens. Virtue means that they shouldn’t destroy their fellow citizens in the process, since that’s generally bad for business. I guess that cigarette companies have found that it’s okay if you kill them slowly after decades.
Not only that, it’s regulation. Who loves regulation? Big companies. Regulations make it hard for small companies to start, make it hard for them to compete, but increases their profit margin. I mean, I would have loved to compete with Pfizer® with my “Super Saline Covid Injection” that didn’t cause myocarditis, but they would probably want to make sure mine was entirely WD-40® free. Which would still likely have been better for people than the mRNA Vaxx. But who is counting? Not the CDC®.
What else? Intelligence. If you ask ChatGPT® about the correlation between intelligence and national prosperity it blows a fuse. Bing™ chimes right in: “There is a correlation between IQ and economic prosperity. A one point increase in IQ is associate with a 4% increase in welfare for the average country. High IQ is associated with high per-capita GDP and fast economic growth, as well as more equal income distribution.”
Ouch! That’ a truth bomb that most folks don’t want to hear. IQ is not really something that anyone can change for the better. Sure, I can drink a few shots of Jim Beam® and take mine down, but what I’ve got, is what I’ve got, from birth.
But smart people in an economy can keep a more stable economy, and can better grow a complex economy than a group of people who don’t know what vowels are. Sure, I’d like to think that groups of dumb people could get together and solve the nuclear fusion problem, but I’ve met dumb people – they can’t figure out how to split a restaurant tab without a knife fight then a follow-up sacrifice of a live chicken to Gorto the Destructor god.
Or I could have just said, “Imagine Haiti” and everyone would know what I meant. Again, I’m not blaming Haitians for making Haiti, well, Haiti, but if you want to cry, go look over the difference in income between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. I’ll save you the time – the Dominican Republic has nine times the per capita income, despite being on the same exact island. The data I found (on the ‘net, mind you) has the Dominican Republic has an average IQ of 80. Haiti has an average IQ of 67. Haiti has an average intellectual capacity (if this data is correct) at the level where Social Security would consider them disabled (on average).
Having great resources? That doesn’t appear to help. It’s the System. It’s the People. If Hong Kong and Singapore can create wealth out of zero resources in a location that almost anyone in the United States would consider so crowded they’d have to make an appointment to change their mind, it’s not space, it’s not stuff.
We can change our laws to allow more Liberty and increase Virtue and reverse the trends away from the nonsense of the last fifty years that encourage large corporate growth at the expense of the People. But if we change out our People? Who are we? Will we see the continuation of turning our cities into Haiti on the half shell?
Studies of the genetics of dead Romans (LINK) showed that “intelligence increased from the Neolithic Era (Z= -0.77) to the Iron Age (Z= 0.86), declines after the Republic Period and during the Imperial Period (Z= -0.27).” Why did Rome fall? Many reasons. It lost Liberty, it lost Virtue, and it replaced Romans with people who weren’t Romans. Wonder if we’ll learn this time around?"
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