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The best way to keep people poor Magatte Wade is an African anti-poverty activist. No, not like you’re thinking – she’s an actual anti-poverty activist. In fact her chosen term to describe what she does is “prosperity activist”.
In a tweet made yesterday, she wrote,
https://x.com/magattew/status/1986537994984058913
The best way to keep people poor:
Convince them their poverty is someone else’s fault and only the government can save them.
I think that is true.
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Yes indeed.
And it must be made clear that the “scientific justification” for the idea that people are poor because other people are rich, the Labour Theory of Value, was refuted in the 19th century. Even in the early 19th century many economists had shown the Labour Theory of Value was false – whether Gossen and Rau in Germany, Ferrara in Italy, or, in Britain the home of the Labour Theory of Value, Richard Whately and Samuel Bailey – however some economists continued to defend the Labour Theory of Value till the 1870s when such economists as Carl Menger finally ended this.
We are well past 1870 now – it is 2025, there is no excuse for someone coming out with the Marxist “exploitation” tap dance – any more than there would be for someone coming out with David Ricardo’s theory on LAND – ended by Frank Fetter more than a century ago.
One can still say that some inequality is artificial – the product of Credit Money (rather than honest commodity money such as gold or silver – with lending coming from Real Savings, the actual sacrifice of consumption, rather than the legalized fraud of Credit Expansion) – but that is hardly a new discovery, it was explained by Richard Cantillon some 300 years ago, which is why it is called the “Cantillon Effect”.
Lastly on high taxes – if high taxes produced equality then California and New York City which (local, State and Federal together) have absurdly high tax rates on “the rich” wold be know for equality, they are known for the opposite – very radical inequality.
It’s how the left works: All your problems are the fault of someone else, and government can penalize them and solve your problem. Ultimately, everyone is blamed and penalized into poverty, but all your problems are still someone elses fault. Just not governments’.
David Ricardo’s view of land (which led to the absurdities of Henry George) is, I suspect, a hangover from a certain theological (yes theological) view.
Both Roman Law and Common Law view land as unowned before it is claimed – but certain theological thinkers (a minority – but an important minority) hold that the Book of Genesis means that God gave the world to humanity in-common (in common) – so that private ownership has to be “justified” by either “as much and as good left for others” (clearly impossible), or, alternatively, some form of financial payment – whilst this has always been a minority interpretation of the Book of Genesis it has been argued for by some scholars, notably by John Locke – and it is possible (possible) that such people as Thomas Paine and David Ricardo where influenced by John Locke’s theological view of the Book of Genesis – a view he shared with the German scholar Samuel Pufendorf and some others.
John Locke is vague (very vague) on how much this Poor Law payment should be – but Thomas Paine was more explicit – arguing (for example in his book “Agrarian Justice”) that there should be a tax of up to 100% (yes – 100%) or large estates -= which would, supposedly, fund various government services and benefits.
Henry George and others in the 19th century described this a form of “citizen’s pension” with either everyone, or everyone below a certain income, being given an income to be financed by a Land Tax.
The economics of all this is quite false – but its origins are in theology rather than economics.
For example, John Locke declares that a ship’s captain with a cargo of food who sails on to another port, seeking a higher prices for their cargo, is “guilty of murder” if anyone starves in the first port – even if the captain had no contract to sell there.
From a legal point of view (Roman or Common Law) this view of John Locke is utterly false – but he was thinking in the terms of his particular view of scripture, rather than law. A minority view of scripture.
The virtue of justice is to-each-their-own, the virtue of charity (benevolence) is about helping others – but voluntarily helping them.
Using force (“pay or we send you to prison and take your stuff by force”) is not the virtue of charity, or the virtue of justice – it is “Social Justice” the opposite and sworn enemy of justice, and it leads (regardless of its intention) to more-and-worse poverty over time, not less poverty over time.
The Papal States in history were famous (or rather infamous) for the state granaries and so on (which tried to ape the Roman Empire). Pope Gregory XIII is famous for his reform of the calendar – but in the Papal States he was better known for his demand that all property owners (even families who held property for many generations) prove their “right” to it – he did this in order to have a (threadbare) justification for taking property in order to fund what he considered worthy causes.
The Papal States became infamous for both poverty and banditry – but it was not alone.
Even once wealthy Florence went down the road of high “Progressive” taxes and various benefits for the poor – visitors in the 1700s were shocked at just how poverty stricken Florence had become.
As for Africa – we were told that such failures as Ghana (independent from 1957 – “seek you first the Political kingdom, then all else will be given unto you” – said the blasphemous ruler Kwame Nkrumah – a Mamdani type figure promising that government could do everything for people) and socialist Tanzania were due to not inheriting an advanced infrastructure – although this justification for “Social Justice” disaster does not explain how everything got WORSE after independence under Social Justice rulers.
However, Rhodesia and South Africa were advanced countries – and 45 years of Social Justice rule in Rhodesia and 31 years of Social Justice rule in South Africa have utterly discredited this doctrine – anyone who trots it out now (AFTER all this) is not honestly mistaken, they know it will lead to horror – and that is what they want.
I have been extremely impressed with Wade ever since she appeared on this eye-opening episode of Triggernometry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9Deq3eg1CM