Poor? - Get some chickens - Bill Gates answer to poverty

[raging moderate]

37. Yes, this is a good idea for some but not all poor people.

When my husband and I were raising two small children, traveling all over Illinois looking for jobs, landing in new communities where jobs were likely, we found that the rules for unemployment compensation effectively required us to search for jobs within anywhere 70 miles or less from our dwelling. This can easily produce a situation in which two small children are caught in a natural disaster in a place where nobody knows them or their parents and with their parents 70 miles away in opposite directions and 140 miles away from each other. Imagine trying to raise chickens in this situation. Or in the cramped tenement quarters where city poor people are crammed. Not to mention the skills which are difficult to acquire in that environment. So often, rich people over-estimate their own knowledge and wisdom when setting up rules for the poor people, so that they wind up twisting the screws far tighter than they realize. Also, many of them are so sure that poverty is not noble that subconsciously they assume that poor people must be poor because they are somehow ignoble. Whereas actually some people become poor because of an inward nobility that drives them to take care of sick or disabled relatives, or refuse to cheat on the job or on their taxes, or pay their debts, no matter how much it hurts.