Let me be clear: yes, obviously, poverty should be eradicated. Yes, it is a very worthy goal. But, is it possible in the current ideological framework? And is it enough? Let me try to answer both questions.

Poverty is an income deficit. The text adopted at the ‘Summit of the future’ says this: “Action 2. We will place the eradication of poverty at the centre of our efforts to achieve the 2030 Agenda. Eradicating poverty, in all its forms and dimensions, including extreme poverty, is an imperative for all humankind. We decide to: (a) Take comprehensive and targeted measures to eradicate poverty by addressing the multidimensional nature of poverty, including through rural development strategies and investments and innovations in the social sector, especially education and health; (b) Take concrete actions to prevent people falling back into poverty, including by establishing well-designed, sustainable and efficient social protection systems for all that are responsive to shocks.”

This text calls for several comments. First, it repeats a promise that has been made since 1973 but never came true. There are strong doubts that it will be kept this time. Secondly, taking ‘comprehensive and targeted’ measure is not very clear, unless the comprehensive refers to the programs and the targeted to the people. What is missing here is the ‘universal’, not in the way the World Bank sees it, ‘for those who need it’ but for really the whole population. Enough research has been done to know that targeted measures do not work. Three, I want to criticise the ‘multidimensional nature of poverty’. We certainly need ‘rural development strategies, investments, and innovations in the social sector, especially education and health’. It is clear we cannot know what exactly is meant by it in this text, but it cannot be denied that a progressive implementation is not excluded.

What is wrong with ‘multidimensional poverty’? It is a fact that ‘poverty’, defined as a lack of resources to live a life of dignity, free of want, never comes alone. It is always accompanied by problems of health, bad housing, lack of education for the children, far too low wages, lack of power, and psychological problems due to the stress of daily struggles. Some of these are consequences that in turn become causes of poverty. That is why poverty is often seen as a ‘vicious circle’.

But just imagine that people would have enough income, would most of the problems not disappear as snow in the sun? With enough money to go and see a doctor in case of illness, to pay the school invoices and buy the uniform for the kids, to pay the rent, to take a bus or a train… If people live in a market economy—and a big majority of people do—they need money to survive. The more the market economy is developed, the more money they will need for a life in dignity, the higher the wages or the allowances and benefits will have to be. Neoliberalism has given a bigger role to markets, that is why poverty cannot be eradicated without focusing on incomes.

The problem with this ‘multidimensionality’, in rich countries even more than in poor ones, is that efforts will be made to work on all these ‘multidimensional’ elements, forgetting to help people with earning an income. You can have a rural development strategy, doctors, and schools in the neighbourhoods, good roads and buses to go into town, but if wages and allowances remain too low, these will not help to lift people out of poverty.

By saying ‘poverty is an income deficit’, I do not say one does not have to work on all the ‘multidimensional’ elements, but one has to make a difference between what is ‘poverty’ and what are the consequences or causes of it. Poverty is not a given, people are not born poor but are rendered poor, day by day, especially because of too low wages, lack of allowances, and exploitation. Poor people should be given the power to work and fight for decent incomes. This is what has to be tackled in the first place, and this should be the initial and final objective of all poverty strategies.

If nothing serious has improved in the situation of hundreds of millions of poor people, it is precisely because there is no real anti-poverty strategy because efforts are made on all side-problems, too often forgetting the real and basic needs of people. It is because of all the fog created around ‘poverty’, the semantic confusion that is willingly created, the refusal to define poverty by what it really is, a lack of resources to fulfil basic needs, that all strategies developed till now are failing. Because there is no political will at all to really eradicate it. Our current economic and political system needs poor people. To mention but one single reason: when focusing on poverty one does not need to talk about the scandalous inequalities of this world.

I used to say: would anyone dare to define wealthy people in another way as by pointing to their wealth, their enormous amounts of money and assets? Would anyone dare to define them by speaking of their social capital, their education, their good health? Of course not. Rich people are rich because they have a lot of money. I was wrong on that. Most probably because too many people are now aware of the contradiction between poor and rich people and the way they are defined, an effort is undertaken to change the definition of the rich!

‘The new definition of wealth’ writes Steve Burns in ‘New Trader U’. “Gone are the days when wealth was solely measured by the size of one’s bank account or the square footage of one’s home. As we navigate the complexities of 2024, a new, more holistic definition of wealth is emerging—one that encompasses not just financial prosperity but also personal fulfilment, social impact, and overall well-being." This is extremely interesting. The author refers to the ‘ultimate luxury’ of having time and freedom, health and well-being, a potential for personal growth, social capital, financial freedom, a sense of purpose (sic!) and ethical wealth: making a positive impact.

As if there were no over-stressed billionaires, sick, sad and lonely old billionaires, without any sense of purpose except making more and more money, passive income I mean, because the luxury is ‘to cover life expenses without relying on active work’. Again, a lot of fog and semantic confusion around what wealth is: a lot of financial resources. Period.

There is this famous conversation between Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway: ‘The rich are different from us’; ‘Yes, they have more money’. Poverty cannot be eradicated without a clear definition and a clear strategy. One can work on all the side elements, consequences, and causes of poverty, but if the final objective is not to provide enough money to poor people who live in a market economy, poverty will prevail. Poverty eradication is a worthy goal, but is it enough?

Having revealed already a couple of truths about wealth, the answer to this second question will be obvious: no, it is not. One can imagine a world without poverty, but would that be a just world? A ‘just world’ is difficult to define, but it will be easy to agree on the fact that a just world cannot be one in which a handful of billionaires have as much wealth as more than half of the world population. The world’s five richest men have more than doubled their fortunes from $405 billion to $869 billion since 2020—at a rate of $14 million per hour—while nearly five billion people have been made poorer.

The richest 1 percent have amassed $42 trillion in new wealth over the past decade, nearly 34 times more than the entire bottom 50 percent of the world’s population. Global dividend payments to shareholders grew on average 14 times faster than worker pay in 31 countries, which together account for 81 percent of global GDP, between 2020 and 2023. Less than eight cents in every dollar raised in tax revenue in G20 countries now comes from taxes on wealth. All of this data comes from Oxfam International.

As has now been clearly shown by researchers such as Thomas Piketty or Branko Milanovic, this huge inequality threatens democracy. Wealth gives power, to the poor as well as to the rich. The more wealth, the more power. The more power in the hands of a few, the less power for those at the bottom. It has to be repeated: poverty eradication is a worthy goal but cannot be realised in the current economic and political situation with a lack of a clear definition and strategy. Moreover, it is far from enough to reach a just world.

Urgent actions are needed to tackle inequality, not by just looking at the lower classes, as the international organisations do, but by tackling wealth, by introducing wealth taxes, and by eradicating tax havens. Steps are being taken in this direction, especially at the UN which now has a mandate to work on a UN Tax Convention. Much more is needed, especially political will from all partners involved. All of this can be a worthy goal to put on the agenda of the Second UN Summit on Social Development at the end of 2025. Poverty should be made illegal. It should not exist in the rich world we are living in.