Poverty Is A Lack Of Money

For more than a year now I’ve been reading one or more newspapers a day. It started as a way to get away from any screens or my work for an hour, as I ate my lunch and breakfast all at once. It turned into an important ritual each day that usually leaves me with many new insights and ideas for projects. (And, unfortunately, some frustration and sadness about all the stupidity and bad news in the world.)

But this article focuses on good news! Because for months now I’ve regularly read articles about a handful of local projects. Projects meant to help those in need and pull people out of poverty and homelessness as much as possible.

And they are working. Which is no surprise to me or anyone else who read about similar studies/projects, but is probably a surprise to everyone else.

Because these projects don’t have complicated requirements. They don’t ask the world from a homeless person and only accept 1% of the people who apply. They don’t give you 50 euros a month and expect that to solve anything.

No, these projects (for the most part) give people in need free money. If you can provide arguments as to why you need the support (or, rather, why your current income is insufficient), you can apply and will most likely be accepted. You’ll get a sum of money each month that ensures you can buy enough food and a proper place to live, nothing more.

And these are no small projects. This is happening in one of the largest cities in the Netherlands (Eindhoven). To get an idea, you might look up the “Bouwdepot” project.

I personally don’t live there—I live in a small town near it, still with my parents—or I would have perhaps looked into joining the program myself. It is no secret that I have always been completely out of money and, more and more, out of liveable space. I know the effects of poverty and scarcity first-hand, and I am absolutely aware that I was still born on a much more privileged level than many others.

The point is that all the articles about the project are positive. They always are.

The people joining the project don’t take the money and, I don’t know, run away or become a criminal. They take the money and build a life. They are finally able to take care of their health. They are finally able to go to university, to support a child, to pay off debts, to have a home.

Within 6 months, most of them start to thrive. Because they are healthy, they experience far less stress and anxiety, they can look ahead and take steps towards specific dream goals (such as starting a business, getting a degree, etcetera).

Most of them report a feeling of gratitude. With this money, they want to enter a field that benefits society. These people do not grow up to become bankers or greedy CEOs, they become doctors, social workers, teachers, whatever they can do to give back to the society that helped them when they needed it.

Of course, there are bad apples. This isn’t even a question of goodwill or character. You can get free money and still don’t know what you want in life. You can have good health and a safe home, and still get unlucky or make bad decisions that get you nowhere.

But the vast majority of people in such projects, like in all the other places they tried it, start to thrive and pay back that money a hundred times over.

And, to be absolutely clear, the vast majority of people applying never did anything wrong in the first place. They weren’t lazy. They’re no criminals or addicts. They were often already working one or two jobs, or already had a degree. They were simply dealt an unlucky hand or struggling to stay afloat due to events from the past. Such projects have the specific goal of preventing you from falling into homelessness or unrecoverable debt. It’s prevention for the unfortunate souls who simply don’t have the money to prevent disaster themselves.

The articles I’ve read have mostly been about short-term success. Because, well, they’ve only been running for so long.

But the long-term benefits have also been proven by other studies and similar projects ten times over. The “free money” you pay these people prevents most of their health issues (physical or mental), saving way more money than you spent. The “free money” you pay these people turns them into workers in well-paying jobs and active members of the society and economy, which pays back that money ten times over. The data is clear here, and this project just confirms it again. By removing the stress about money, by ensuring kids have enough to eat, they perform much better academically and creatively—which, again, pays back that investment a hundred times over.

Poverty is a lack of money.

It’s nothing else. It’s just a lack of money induced by stupid systems of governance, and then kept that way because of a wide array of bad excuses. Excuses like “but they’re just lazy” or “everyone would stop working” are used to prevent giving these people the money they need to survive. Even if the data shows, just like this project, that it actually costs way more money to artificially keep them poor. Both short-term and long-term.

These “just give free money”-projects were such a success that Eindhoven wants to continue them. They constantly reported being positively surprised by how powerful and impactful this simple act was. Which, let’s be clear, puts absolutely no pressure on the overall budget. The “free money” given out is such a low sum … it’s peanuts compared to all other expenses in a big city like this.

So that’s all great news, right?

Wrong! In the most recent articles, our Dutch government has actually started to denounce this project. Yes. That’s right. They gave Eindhoven a stern lecture about the project and forbade them from continuing it, let alone increasing the scope/budget for it.

Their argument? “Income politics are something The Hague ( = name for where government resides) should handle, not local municipalities.”

Income politics? The word alone drives me mad. Why is people’s income just another toy for politicians to play with in the first place? How is such a tiny project giving a few people a liveable wage such a threat to their “income politics”?

But it perfectly demonstrates the overall view of such projects. People truly believe that it’s somehow “bad” and will “harm society” to just give free money to those who need it. Especially rich and powerful people (such as politicians) love to believe that.

But a belief is all it is. The data doesn’t support it. Eindhoven is literally doing stuff right now that flies in the face of all of that, proving they’re wrong. They don’t care.

It’s such a common belief that even many poor people adopt it. They get told so many times that they can “make it if they work hard” that they start to believe their poverty is somehow completely their own fault. As a kid, I was told so many times how I had to do well in school and get all sorts of degrees and follow all these rules, because if I did that, then I would “make it” or “be rewarded for it”.

Which is just not true, in general, as we currently experience a massive wave of highly educated people who can’t find a job.

But it’s also not true for me because I lacked the funds and network that would have opened up many doors. I had quite a promising start as a video game developer, getting some attention and even selling a few small early projects, but I literally had to stop doing that because I couldn’t pay for a computer that could play/develop games anymore. The few jobs/income streams I’ve had the past ~15 years have ALL been because of network, not skill, or degree, or merit. All of them. And I have missed out on many great opportunities too because neither me nor my parents/family had the funds to invest in anything.

It was just scraping by, day by day, working really hard while earning pennies. I have all those degrees. I got all my good grades. I haven’t had a vacation, or even a free evening, in ~15 years. None of that did me any good, because I lacked the money to do anything serious or get in any position of power and comfort.

Poverty is a lack of money.

You solve it by giving people free money. That’s it. We know this. It’s been proven again, and it will keep being proven until, hopefully, some politicians actually change their beliefs.

These are not large sums of money. Just enough to live. To not have your health decline because of stress and malnourishment, to not make terrible choices out of fear of losing your home/custody/job, to actually be able to pay tuition and get a degree in the first place.

It’s a blip in the budget. Politicians throw away a hundred times more money without a second thought, usually blowing it on tax benefits or bonusses somewhere, than it would ever cost to give anyone who says they need it this small amount of free money.

And most will take the money and start living. They’ll be healthy, they’ll be an active member of society, they’ll pay it back easily (often out of gratitude).

If I had that money? If I had received free money the moment I became an adult/started my own business? I am absolutely certain I would be healthier (both physically and mentally) as be running a profitable creative business by now. I would be paying large sums in taxes and invigorating the creative space around here.

Instead, the lack of money and certainty often made me too ill too work, too stressed to make long-term decisions, and too busy with trying to get money somewhere to actually make what I wanted to make and invest in that. There are so many amazing games I could’ve made, and sold, but instead I was scraping by maintaining someone’s website for almost no money. There are so many books I could’ve added to Dutch (children’s) literature, but instead I started writing almost exclusively in English because it has a wider market that has a bigger chance of earning me a minimum wage. I’ve created board games that I know will do great with families or in the classroom, but I have no funds to get them made physically and invest in them, I don’t even have funds to travel to some game publisher and present a proper game prototype—and that’s where it ends.

Poverty is a lack of money.

I hope Eindhoven gives The Hague the middle finger and just keeps doing this.

If one thing has become clear to me the past years, after reading the local newspaper from front to back each day, and seeing our government trip over themselves, it’s that the country is actually run by the municipalities. For the most part, they ignore the bullshit from The Hague anyway, and they tend to actually care about the people among whom they live every day. I would put far more trust in my local politicians setting up projects like this than some stranger elected once every few years.

The world is heading towards a big decision on “free money” anyways. We already have the problem that there’s too many people and too few (meaningful) jobs. The advent of AI is rapidly removing 80% of those jobs too. Soon there simply will not be enough work left to keep up this facade that everyone should have a (full-time) job, and if you don’t then you must be doing something wrong. In a way, this city is just getting their feet wet with Universal Basic Income early ;)

Those were my thoughts today,

Tiamo