To think money ends poverty- not education, not mindset, not budgeting advice, just actual money?

[WildHazelCritic]

I keep seeing discussions about “breaking the poverty cycle” or helping people escape hardship and the solutions are always long-term or conditional: learn to budget, go back to school, change your mindset. But poverty is often just not having enough money. And people giving money - whether through better wages, benefits, or direct support, would make the biggest difference. AIBU to think we over complicate it because people are uncomfortable with the idea of redistribution or just giving people what they need?

tried multiple jobs but couldn't afford to live in London when I graduated, and am now homeless and unemployed in my mid 30s

Many people, including me, can't afford to live in London. Have you applied for roles outside London? The graduate market is tough but most people eventually get a job.

I think stability and affordability of housing is critical. Having rented I can see how the lack of stability impacts your life and there is a housing crisis which is related to demographics. I recall a property investor years ago saying population increase meant the housing shortage was inevitable, especially in the SE. Governments knew this as the modelling showed but they did little to stimulate growth outside of London, which would have balanced housing needs.

I still firmly believe there are ways out of poverty in the UK, without money. I've seen people around me do it in, 5-10 years. It does involve working hard and perhaps moving to areas of lower cost (as I have done). However I also accept some people don't have the drive/cognitive ability to do this so ££ feels like the solution.

However getting out of poverty, owning a house isn't affordable for many people in London so the answer is to move.

The key to breaking the cycle of poverty is social mobility. And successive governments - Tory and Labour - have done everything possible to kill that off, allowing wages to stagnate and house prices to rocket, indulging the beneficiaries of unearned wealth while taxing the shit out of workers, ramping up the cost of and devaluing degrees, pricing people out of retraining. Lots of people who work full time are also on benefits which are going into the pockets of landlords, utility company shareholders etc. Increasingly if you don't own property/inherit well you're fucked. Education isn't a route to well-paid work and work isn't a route out of poverty.

@Jellycatspyjamas, I think* *you are doing a disservice to the very many children who do grow up in poor households yet succeed in education or in jobs. Compared to 20 years ago the world has opened up with so many online resources/programs to open education for those under privileged. This narrative of "you can't succeed" isn't helpful and actually not truthful.

Look at the schools in deprived areas that are taking children through to higher education irrespective of parental background. These children will succeed in life if they continue to persevere. However I know of children who are not academic but have worked hard to achieve what they are capable of and ended up in jobs that they find fulfilling and allow them to live - think plasterers who are definitely earning more than the average wage

Parental attitude is consistently an indicator of educational attainment and life success.

There is some really good evidence that giving money to people in real poverty is much more effective than giving aid. Look up give directly, Rory Stewart is involved. There have also been studies that show giving a regular income to homeless people results in a lot of them fixing their own problems.

No money without education is generally pretty short lived.

A "fool and his money" and all that.

Decades ago when I was young it was generally viewed as really shameful to have to claim benefits if you were able-bodied, and people would do any kind of work to avoid that. At some point that attitude disappeared among certain parts of society, so in those groups that impetus to try to improve your life through work and training diminished. That attitude becomes ingrained.

Look up Rutgar Bregman. He does a great Ted talk on this called 'Poverty isn't a lack of character, it's a lack of cash'

I'm sorry but please expand on the idea that there are ways out of poverty without money?

Also, "just move" - moving costs money.

I see this suggestion made often. If you can't meet salary requirements to rent or achieve a mortgage, where do you live? Where do you move to? Cheap areas are often poor areas with fewer job / career opportunities and even less in the way of social support. I narrowly avoided street homelessness last year due to lack of council support, I was lucky enough to have a friend in a position to secure me a tiny flat, and they also had to be my guarantor.Not everyone can access that support - cold hard cash on the table.

It's really not that simple for many people.

Ideally it should be a mix of both. It’s pointless to know how to fish if you’re in the middle of a desert.

It’s much easier to benefit from education when you aren’t living in poverty. I don’t just mean buying private education, I mean more subtle things. For instance, if your parents are financially desperate they might be working too many hours/ too overwhelmed to put in effort to read with their children, talk to them and put effort and time into educational activities. The child’s environment. Will not be as rich in learning opportunities, the kid wont have to work throughout their GCSE’s and a levels so will be more relaxed/more able to focus on studying etc. university will be more accessible (this year, the cost of some student residences actually outweighed student loan for the first time). Money brings a certain amount of resilience too.

There is also a lot of evidence that even when people who have experienced poverty do well in education, they do not succeed in getting good jobs.

They avoid it because it's an uncomfortable truth.

Read any thread on here about the service industries and the decline in service and the reply to the wages and working conditions being poor is "That's not my problem as a customer" but it is, because customers are a member of society and as a society we've created this situation by devaluing not just the roles themselves but morally judging those doing them - while being reliant on the services that are provided. There's little wonder people don't want these jobs, that service is declining in these industries, they're told they shouldn't want these jobs, that they're not good enough if they do them - by the very people who are using them, relying on them.

You can educate everyone in the country to degree level, but that doesn't mean that the need or demand for these roles disappears.

I think ultimately what people want is someone doing those jobs but to shut up and put up with the wages and conditions and just provide the service they want, without thinking that actually it's an unfair trade, most people like to think of themselves as fair and not using other people to their benefit, but the fact is they do, every single day in one form or another.

I certainly don’t have a “you can’t succeed” attitude, I do however recognise systemic and structural barriers present for children living in poverty. Things like contextual offers for higher education, financial support for care leavers (in Scotland at least) to access higher education, additional funding for schools to support wellbeing all help reduce those barriers and do make a difference.

The reality is if you and your family can’t meet basic survival needs, it is much, much harder to make your way out of poverty without decent, targeted support.

Sadly it's not that easy OP. Some people can have all the help and money in the world and will never get ahead. The "teach the man to fish" saying is a saying for a reason. Sad, but true. Also you need to distinguish between smart/motivated people who don't have enough money (here it would help) and thick/lazy people who don't have enough money. It's unfair to lump them together.

Education is important, but what people forget is that the jobs that result in people being in working poverty are needed. They prop up the entire country. It is not possible for everyone to get a high-paying job because those jobs rely on those on NMW to turn up and do their bit.

Give everyone in the UK an Oxbridge level education and what you'll end up with is Oxbridge graduates living on UC, cleaning toilets, stocking shelves and wiping arses.

Of course, it is money that makes the most difference.

Well you hand money to the unintelligent and they waste it all then what? Maybe thinking carefully before breeding multiple times children thst end up being raised in to poverty to go on and do the same again ans again

What choices can pwoplw make to better their own situations in the first place why is up to others to pick up the pieces?

What would your life look like if all the "unitelligent" people you have come across just this week packed up and abandoned their jobs and weren't replaced by someone else?

Could you feed your family without supermarket workers, delivery drivers, and factory workers?
Would your office exist if labourers and brick layers all packed in to become stock market traders?
Would you even be here, living and breathing, without low-paid NHS workers? - Hint: if you've ever given birth, the answer to that one is probably no.

Same here. I left school with no qualifications after severe bullying at a crap comp secondary school.

I got a low paid drudgery job as an office junior in a tiny local accountancy practice, earning less than a pound per hour, basically making the tea and taking the post.

I did my O levels and A levels by a mixture of self study and evening classes at the local college, alongside a full time crap job and also weekend work too! That took several years and I just scraped through with bare passes.

By that time, I'd worked through the firm and had moved into the accounts side of things and persuaded the boss to pay for the professional body joining fee to become a trainee accountant, and to finance the self study books - 16 exams over a further 5 years. He woulnd't give paid time off for study nor exams so I had to use holidays to study and exam days.

Finally, some 10 years after leaving school, I qualified as an accountant and never looked back. But by God it dominated my life and was hard work.

So, yes, education is the key. I'd have qualified years earlier had I gone to a decent comp, but life is what it is. You can't just live an excuse like a crap comp and use it to justify a life of no job or minimum wage work.

Nothing comes easy. Education of any kind, whether academic or manual/trades or vocational, etc is hard work and takes time, but you need to keep an eye on the target/end result.

Lots of your examples still require a degree of training, which IS education. We can't just regard "education" as academic - learning manual trades, manual skills, even learning to use a till IS education.

And as I said, education is important, but money makes the biggest difference because those in the lowest-paid professions are more often than not, the most needed.

We could manage without stock traders and wealth managers. We could simply outsource that to other countries, but without HCAs, cleaners, and nurses, most of us would be dead. Without binmen and street cleaners, and refuse workers, we would be living in squalor until we died of cholera or the plague.

People from developing countries see education as a way out of poverty. Look at how immigrants push their kids to achieve and they do better themselves and do better than their parents. It's sad that Western society doesn't seem to see education in the same way. Part of it could be that in Western society you can opt out of working and the government will support your lifestyle choice in other countries you will not eat. Not sure if it's as simple as that, but there certainly is a different mindset.

Then what about all those lottery winners or celebs that had millions going broke and bankrupt

The ability to make and earn money ends poverty. That usually begins with an education/trade/ apprenticeship.
Delaying children also helps.

But even the "lowest" paid jobs can be inaccessible to people without some skills. Lack of a driving licence stops you being a van driver. It may also inhibit your options if there are no jobs within walking distance or unsuitable for public transport, i.e. shift work etc., or "menial" jobs involving travelling such as domiciliary care work or cleaning. Learning to drive IS education and expands your options. I think this thread is too obsessed with formal/academic education which I suppose mirrors real life at the moment with the obsession about Blair's 50% university target! "Education" covers all kinds of things. Even basic reading and writing as even the most menial of jobs these days requires basic literacy, even if just to complete online job applications. We need to broaden our thinking as to what "education" actually means - it really isn't ALL about degrees - there's a plethera of other skills that are just as valid, more accessible, and opens doors.

Well said. I see a lot of the parental "push" in ethnic communities.

Are you missing the bit where I say education is important? Perhaps your education is not as good as you think, as it seems your comprehension skills are somewhat lacking.

Yes, people need education and training, but education and training do not magic up a decent wage for the low-paid workers our country relies on to function. The only way to lift those people out of poverty is to pay them fairly for what they do i.e, give them money.