Jose Victor
Economist IT Professional Mensa Australia Toastmaster |
June 2011
 The sprawling urban poor
The solution is nowhere near what the leading economists are doing today to achieve the Millennium Development Goals!
Economists wracked their brains out in the 20th century to find the solution to Poverty. They were totally unsuccessful. And they will be unsuccessful for the next century unless they change their paradigm. There is a single, straightforward cause of poverty that the economic leaders of the world today can not see! Even if you show them the cause – they would NOT SEE IT. And I understand why.
I was in the same boat for a long, long time. There is one economic principle that we hold dearly in our hearts today – and your mind would have to do the equivalent of climbing Mt. Everest in order to shake it off. That is: "Making a profit is sacrosanct". Remember this while you read the ideas in this paper. Governments have devised all kinds of programs to ease the suffering of the impoverished – and they have had some success in this. There have been programs for the poor, charity work, aid programs, development initiatives aimed at the poorest of the poor. There are micro-financing schemes. There are people initiatives to help build houses for the have-nots. Little one-bedroom, low-cost housing development programs. Health subsidies. Education subsidies. All kinds of programs. An endless stream of grants and subsidies and cash-back programs are established continuously to help the disadvantaged. And yet….we seem to be only scratching the surface! |
Governments are doing all they can to fix poverty! And they can't!
If the government or the non-profit organisations let up even just for a bit, the trend is turned upside down very quickly.
Without these schemes and programs …. the poor will multiply! Why ? Why do we continue to support a system that perpetuates poverty ? The great majority of people lay the blame of poverty on the poor! They say things like: · “they are lazy bums! They deserve to be poor”. · “they have only themselves to blame”. · “anyone can succeed if they worked hard enough, and if they worked smart”. · “they are poor because of corruption. If they stopped being corrupt, they would not be poor” · “no initiative to better themselves” · “they are happy with what they have, so they don’t try harder” · “they spend whatever money they get on booze and drugs” · “no planning. They live for the day” · “look at me! I came from a very poor family! I have a steady job. I’m comfortable! They are poor because they are too lazy to lift themselves.” Is it true? Are they poor because they are lazy? Are they poor because of corruption? Has anyone ever quantified how much laziness really contributes to poverty? Has anyone quantified how much corruption leads to poverty? |
No matter that a lot of us are able to scrape a living. With the current economic system...there will never be enough money for everyone! Never!
What about the claim that anyone who works hard can make it? It’s easy to find examples – because those who went from rags to riches are famous. Bill Gates. Warren Buffett. Richard Branson. Carlos Slim of Mexico. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook. The founders of Google. A number of tycoons in India and Hongkong. And who does not know about Oprah Winfrey?
And do we hear about the families that went from riches to rags? We don’t hear about the sad stories, we only hear about the good news, the ones to cheer about. For every person who makes it from rags to riches, there are countless who go the other way around and you never hear about them. How do we know this? Because if you look at the percentage of people who belong to the group that owns 35% of the worlds wealth – it is actually decreasing every year. Is laziness really the cause of poverty? Are people poor because they are lazy? Or are they lazy because they can’t get a job and are therefore demotivated? There are lazy people at all levels of society. There are some very lazy people even at the wealthy end of the population. And there are many very hard working poor people. In fact, the poor people have no choice but to work hard in order to scrape together a meal for the evening. Go to Top Go to Poverty is Unnecessary |
There is a never-ending struggle to help the poor!
Economists have found it difficult to grapple with the problem of poverty because they consider it a disease among the people. Does it ever occur to them that maybe there is a draught flowing through the building that is causing the illness? And some make the excuse that poverty will always be with us and therefore the only thing we can do is help out the poor impoverished who have not had the wherewithal or the wits to get themselves out of the hole they are in. And then some other economists, usually those associated with NGOS, who really root for the poor people believe that an improvement in government awareness will add a couple of percentage points in budget allocation for poverty programs. Yes, of course this helps. Every little bit helps. But these are band-aid solutions.
I have been a student of poverty for more than 2 decades and it took me a long time, and many thousands of hours, and many hundreds of books and articles and journals, to really understand the root cause of poverty. I am an ardent believer of the principle that if you don’t understand the cause of the problem, then you can not solve it. |
Poverty will be here even if there was not a single lazy person on the planet!
I established this website for one sole purpose: to explain the root cause of poverty, and from there going forward to show what the solution is. Along with laying down the cause of poverty and the solution, there is another objective – which is to spread the word.
There is a solution to poverty ! It can be totally eradicated ! Can it be done ? Yes ! In the next two pages of this site is the explanation of the root cause of poverty. The solution, how to eradicate poverty, is on the fourth page. (Warning: it is best to understand first the root cause of poverty before you jump into the solution). |
You don't need to be an economist to understand this site. The money flow diagrams in the next few pages make it very simple.
 Charity Event
In the analysis of poverty I have come up with money flow diagrams to illustrate how poverty is caused. It is important….., in understanding this paper, it is important that you spend a bit of time to really absorb how the money flows. It is important that you understand the diagrams. Once you get it, it will be very simple reading.
I have always believed, that if something is so complicated that you can’t explain it, then it means you do not understand it enough. Try to explain how a 4-stroke engine works when you don’t understand combustion. Try to explain how water disappears from a saucepan on a fire if you don’t understand evaporation. Try to explain why there is a picture on a TV screen when you don’t understand phosphorescence and cycles of electricity. If you understand them, they are all very easy to explain. And so it is with poverty. If an economist goes on to discuss culture, and corruption, and taxation, and laziness, and human nature and a myriad other things to explain poverty, then I dare say that he does not understand it well enough. If you understand the root cause, you can explain these other factors quite easily. Yes, corruption does contribute to poverty. And yes, culture does have a bit to do with poverty. But they are not the root cause, and their contribution to poverty is almost negligible compared to the root cause. Go to Top Go to Poverty is Unnecessary |
The government can't do anymore than what it is doing now!
You may not care that there are poor people around you. You may not care to know that an increasing percentage of the population experience financial desperation. People who really struggle to make ends meet. People who, in their desperation, fall into the temptations of drugs, stealing, fast money and the underworld. People who become the underclass, the ones who turn to violence because they feel victimised and that the world has done them an injustice. In spite of everything the government is doing, their numbers are growing….steadily….decade after decade!
This is all because the government can’t do anything about it. They can try all they might…and they will never have enough money to raise everyone above the poverty level. Read the next few pages and find out why. The government is not the problem. The people are not the problem. It’s the system that is the problem. The system that we all support. The system that we believe will deliver our dreams. The system that we think will deliver us peace in this millennium. |
Let today be the start of your journey.....to a world where money is never a problem!
 Modern low-cost housing
Fear not! Have courage. Be brave. There is a solution – and it does not involve violence. It does not require the overthrow of government. What it requires is a change to just one thing – and making that one change will be the focus of why I am working on this site.
If you do not care to know about how life can be good for everyone, that is perfectly ok. I don’t expect everyone to be interested in this. But if you will be one of those who feel that we need to change something, that we need to do something about the injustices, that we need to empower everyone so that people can take care of themselves and not live a life of dependence – then dive in. Have a read! What I have on this site so far is the cause – the cause of why so many people are already working so hard, are totally stressed, and still struggling. How to get out of this situation? This discussion will be on this site shortly. Go to Top Go to Poverty is Unnecessary |
Jose Victor Esguerra
I remember, when I was 7 years old, asking my dad why there were so many poor people. I remember the scene vividly but I certainly do not remember what his reply was! Maybe I was too young to understand what he might have said. But the scene never left me. I was obsessed with that same question for decades.
I graduated from the Australian National University with a Bachelor of Science in biology and mathematics. I also have a graduate diploma in Computer Science – which pushed me into a career in IT. But because the poverty question was always with me, after a few years of working I took a couple of years off and pursued a Bachelor of Arts in economic history and political sociology at the University of NSW, Sydney. That is where i met Terry Leahy and Raul Pertierra. That is where i was inspired by the ideas of Robert Dahl, Andre Gunder Frank and Donald Horne. In the mid-90s I decided to stay in the Philippines for a while to establish a personal acquaintance with poverty. I did some masters degree classes in political sociology under Walden Bello and Randy David. I was a voracious reader of books on economics, forever trying to understand the real cause, the root cause of poverty. I must have read more than 300 books on the subject. I thought it might have been inflation, or money supply, or, indeed, laziness. I looked at cultural aspects, human nature, history, economic history, corruption, attitude, and so many other things as possible factors for poverty. It was relentless. I would read, and write, and read some more, write some more. Every time I was in a coffee shop, I was with my notebook – writing down my thoughts. As an IT professional, I am used to doing data flow diagrams. It was very natural for me to use these tools for money flow analysis. I started using them way before I discovered that there were existing money flow diagrams used by other economists. I could not refer to my diagrams as just money flow diagrams because my use of the diagrams was quite different. I also refer to them as Production-Sales Cycle diagrams. It was with the use of these diagrams that things started to fall into place. Later on the diagrams came to life and it helped to explain so many mysteries in the economics of poverty. In 2010 I was invited quite a number of times to give lectures on the subject “The Root Cause of Poverty”. I spent a great deal of time travelling between Manila and the Visayas to present my ideas to NGOs. It was the university students that I delivered the lectures to who were the most excited. I could see them looking at the possibilities for the future, especially when i started talking about the solution. |
The Journey
I have embarked on this journey of disseminating three things:
1. The root cause of poverty 2. The solution for the eradication of poverty 3. How to implement the solution. I will cover all these three in this website – but naturally it will be only at a fairly high level. The details will have to be in a book. And expounding on the ideas will be done via lectures and seminars. There is no choice! If we do not do something about what is causing poverty, then we will almost definitely be heading into another world war. It will not be a world war like the ones we had last century. It will be a war of attrition, a war with multiple but invisible fronts, a war that will sap the energy out of everyone. It will not just be a war with bombs and killing, it will also be a war of crimes and personal injuries. The poor will become more desperate. And the rich will spend so much more to defend themselves. Address the root cause of impoverishment, and you will be surprised at the result. We will have a quality of life that would have been impossible to even dream about. One by one, slowly, I will explain how these can come about. I will show how overcoming this single cause of poverty will lead to some incredible outcomes.. I know that not all of you will be interested. For those of you who might be, I also know that most of you who read this will do so with scepticism. That’s fine. I only ask that you put some effort into understanding the money flow diagrams, and that you keep an open mind to the possibilities. This paper is not targeted specifically only at the third world. It is for any one who wants to understand why their friends and family are struggling to make ends meet. It is for those who can’t understand why even in their very wealthy country there are many who can’t afford to buy their own home. It is for anyone who believes that there must be an easier way for us in the first world to help the third and fourth world get on their feet. If you know people who are having money problems, at least, you might want to understand why they do. Almost certainly, it is not their fault. |