AI chats with us about eradicating poverty
Everybody is taking their problems – even personal problems – to Artificial Intelligence bots and getting advice. I decided ask Chat GPT to solve United States poverty.
Good news – AI says that “Eradicating poverty in the United States is entirely possible.”
Bad news – the steps to get there are unpopular.
As expected, AI came up with “bold, sustained policy choices”, such as expanding SNAP, raising the minimum wage, universal access to medical care, and – my favorite – investing in affordable housing.
AI also gave a nod to public attitudes and political will as obstacles. Political will and public attitudes shape each other as well as shaping social systems. We (the public and the policymakers we vote for) create systems in a certain way when we believe the solution is for the person in poverty to act differently. SNAP is an excellent example of such a system.
Expanding SNAP – one of AI’s top suggestions for eradicating poverty -- makes no sense if we believe people use the benefit instead of working. What do we know about SNAP and work choices? During recessions, SNAP participation goes up; a year or two after a recession, it goes down, roughly parallel to the unemployment rate. SNAP enrollment moves in concert with the number of jobs available in the economy; if it were related to people choosing not work, it would not move with the economy.
Side note: In 2021, unemployment went down dramatically and SNAP participation increased slightly. This seems to go against the pattern of economy down/ SNAP up, economy up/ SNAP down. There may be another culprit at work here. Since 2021, real hourly wages have shrunk by 0.7% and the Consumer Price Index has risen 22.7%. More and more people work yet still qualify for SNAP; and more people apply now that the grocery bill is a bigger burden. Of SNAP families with children, 55% have an employed adult in the household.
Expanding SNAP makes perfect sense if we believe that hungry people are not well prepared to find and keep good paying jobs. In one case we are feeding lazy people; in the other, we are providing food so that people can flourish.
But, as AI admitted, the public attitudes and political will are not “there” to reduce poverty. The tragedy of this is that we all lose when people do not flourish. After all, the person who could find the cure of cancer or the substitute for fossil fuels may have been born into a poor family. And they won’t change the world if they are spending their life hungry.
