Our large population is not a cause of poverty but an asset a resource write an article
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Answer:
It could be an asset, but we aren’t using it as such.
Every day, hoards upon hoards of our population are tied outside of the workforce in prisons, in poverty and unemployment, underemployed producing less wealth than they are capable of, mired in trauma and suffering that’s held them back from their potential.
With relatively simple investments in our human capital, that large mass of workers instead becomes the breeding ground for start ups, for incredibly high productivity labor, for innovations that change our world and bring new solutions to the multi-dimensional, cross-sectoral crises we face every day in every part of our society.
Some nations invest more in their human capital than others, and it’s apparent in the outcomes those nations see. Those with enormous investments in the psychological, cognitive, physical development of their populations have long life expectancy, high happiness, high productivity, highly complex markets, and achieve a great deal of innovation. Those who fail to invest in their human capital, we refer to as failed states, as the people fundamentally lack the development to deal with the complexity of society, and thus are relatively doomed to be stuck where they are.
The advanced welfare apparatus of the nordic states has shown enormous benefit. Despite it’s expense on society of providing so many comprehensive services and benefits to all in society, they are also actively outcompeting much of the rest of the world on the newest innovations in technology and culture.
Meanwhile, nations like America, where the welfare state is bare bones and tends to trap you in it with strict, frequent means testing and red tape, even very skilled, hard workers set back by temporary unemployment can be trapped for years, unable to do more than part time underemployed work for society as their productive years pass by unused, resulting in massive poverty in our cities, a slowed growth rate, a slowed innovation rate, falling life expectancy, and other ills.
The practice of developing our human capital to do better as societies and nations, to outcompete the rest of the world and to help bring the rest of the world to a better level is a relatively young field of study, and by far the best work I’ve seen come out of it so far is “The Listening Society” by Hanzi Freinacht (The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One (Metamodern Guides) (Volume 1): Hanzi Freinacht: 9788799973903: Amazon.com: Books ).
This book takes a serious and deep look into human development, and what a society that focuses heavily on human development would look like, what problems it’d face, what solutions it would bring, and how to bring about such a society. It is by a wide margin one of the most eye opening, honest, and real books I’ve ever laid my eyes on and it opened my perspective a great deal.
A kid who grows up in a rough single parent house, gets in trouble a lot, goes to jail a couple times, never manages to find his stride, is going to be a burden, a cost on society his entire life. Instead of producing a great deal for the world, he might cost the income of another person or several to support over that time, or worse, simply take plenty of people from us forever, as the mass killers, the most maldeveloped in our society, tend to do.
Take that same kid, and put them in the same school, but where their parent has more rights in the workplace and has more time and energy at home to be a good parent, where the teachers start the day with 15 minutes of mindfulness meditation followed by 15 minutes of training in emotional intelligence, trauma/stress coping skills, communication and relationship building skills, and where other students, teachers, and parents all have access to those same programs, and the research says overwhelmingly that they will engage better with the content, get in trouble less, and be more kind and supportive of others. Suddenly this kid no longer costs society for his entire life, he’s gained the tools and skills he needs to be productive, to treat others well, and to add to society and think about it complex ways, rather than to reactively crawl through life in a state of insecurity, fear, and anger.
Doing great things, building great infrastructure, going far places in space, all of this takes massive manpower. Thousands of people designing parts, systems, the relationships between them, coordinating mission parameters and scheduling and everything else. People studying the materials, their sourcing, sustainability, etc. Whether or not people are an asset or a liability depends on whether you’ve invested in oppressing and crushing them or developing and freeing them.