[swframe]

"Applied" education is the best path for the poor. Don't teach the 3-Rs. Teach them how to fix their problems: 1) fight the cycle of poverty 2) weaken gangs 3) reduce crime and drug usage 4) renovate local housing, schools, and infrastructure 5) create and run local businesses 6) employee all teenagers after school and during the summers, etc.

Once they have pass those classes, they can learn the other stuff.

And this is how we should pay for it. Sell treasury bonds like we would to raise funds to improve our national infrastructure. In other words, invest in poor people in such a way that you can repay the investment from their future taxes. Specifically, pay poor people to work their ass off to fight poverty. (No person should be paid to do nothing; that is a horrible idea.) Allow the wealthy who want to reduce their taxes to keep $x in taxes for every $y they invest in hiring poor people to fight the causes of poverty. In fact, we should create poverty fighting companies who complete and measure their success by the quality of life improvements they cause. The higher performing companies lower the taxes of their investors.

(This isn't even expensive. Paying a teenager to avoid a life of crime costs $1000s/year and putting them in jail costs $10,000s/year. Furthermore, providing teenagers with IUDs costs $100s and saves $1000s.)

[matt4077]

Just pointing out some assumptions you're making in your post:

1. Poor people are stupid/uneducated ("Applied education is the best path for the poor")

2. Poor people are lazy ("pay poor people to work their ass off")

3. Poor people are criminals ("reduce crime...")

4. ...and junkies ("...and drug usage")

5. The broken window theory is right ("renovate ...")

[swframe]

Agreed, I made gross assumptions based on my crazy background and experiences. I grew up in public housing (80% welfare families) in East New York (Brooklyn) during the 80s when that tiny (crack infested) neighborhood had the highest murder rate in all of NYC. For the last 3 years, I currently fund the education, teach and mentor several people in the 3rd world who make less than $10/day. The poor people I grew with and I now try to help are ...

1. Smarter than me but don't know how to end the cycle of poverty (one had a baby recently at age of 19 and both parents are unemployed).

2. Are not lazy but work in dead-end 60-hour/week jobs where they are not learning the skills that allow them to make enough to escape poverty and have no time to learn new skills.

3. Are not criminals but have accepted their fate and are not working to change their neighborhoods to reduce the temptation of their kids to enter a life of crime.

4. Are not drug users but drug related crime and extreme violence surrounds them (they have seen dead bodies in the streets on their way to work).

Other kinds of poverty exists. My proposal should be adapted to work in the situations I've not experienced.