Being richer solves a lot of problems.
This should seem obvious but all too many act as if it isn't.
Simply because we're humans, we'd find things to worry about.
If everyone in Bangladesh were on Tk100,00 a month, there would still be problems but they'd all be very different problems from those currently on Tk2,000.
Being rich means that we simply do not have the problems of the poor.
Sure, we might then have rich people problems, but as I say, they're different ones.
That we will still have problems even if we're all rich is just one of those human things. Humans are like that. There's even an internet meme about it: “First world problems” which can be rather fun to look up.
This is not just a philosophic observation, it's something important for us as we direct our efforts into making the world a better place.
There are indeed myriad problems that the poor have. But should we solve each of those problems, one by one, or just go for the economic growth that makes the poor rich and thereby solve those poor people problems?
An example of this is a piece in this newspaper. There are stories of how bad the poor have had it from the floods around Chittagong -- I believe them all. For it always is the poor who find their lives made worse -- more worse perhaps -- by disasters and other vilenesses.
Something mentioned repeatedly is access to menstrual products. OK, yes, this is a real problem. And yet part of the solution seems to be “ensuring dignified menstrual hygiene management” and that's where I disagree.
Yes, I grasp the point. When my wife and I lived in Soviet Russia, one of the supplies I bought in England to bring back to her was packs of tampons to deal with exactly this.
However, at a societal level, I disagree. The point is not to provide menstrual products to poor people. It's to not have people so poor that menstrual products are a problem.
That is, grow the economy, make the poor rich, and this problem, along with any others, simply vanishes into the general wealth of the society.
This does in fact happen. While there are still political campaigns about it and so on, the reality is this has been solved in any and all of the rich countries.
It's simply a matter of fact that a supermarket-brand box of 24 tampons costs a pound in Britain. That is five minutes work at the current minimum wage of £12 an hour in that same country.
Something that is available in hundreds of variations in tens of thousands of shops across the country at the price of five minutes minimum wage work just isn't a societal problem any more.
That's one that has been solved by people becoming rich.
This is true of many of the problems of poverty. They're solved by not being poor any more.
So, the societal effort should be toward solving poverty itself through economic growth. For that then, in and of itself, solves all those other problems.
This is true of housing, of nutrition, of having a few changes of clothes, of medical care, of education and yes, it's even a cure for gender discrimination -- rich people don't depend upon muscle power to make a living. Therefore, men do not control household incomes the way they do in nations such as Bangladesh.
Most of the things we don't like about poverty are caused by poverty itself, not other issues. Therefore the solution for the problems of poverty is the economic growth that abolishes poverty.
Tim Worstall is a senior fellow at the Adam Smith Institute in London.
