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Comment by bombcar | Hacker News Reader

I suspect a percentage of the 40% don't believe it's possible, or believe it would end up being 0.5% of their income to enrich a select few (as has seemed to happen with previous attempts to "save" entire countries).

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Of course, the bigger question is what percent of that 40 actually want extreme poverty to exist for one reason or another — be it that they hate the people who are currently poor and can’t envision it happening to them or their community or because they have some weird cognitive defect like the just world fallacy that causes them to believe this is a positive condition for the world to be in.

Some people also think that we should spend that money on other stuff that they’re interested in like cool space stuff and just don’t care about poor people and never will.

Another interesting question is what part of the 60% want extreme poverty to exist for one reason or another? Probably the same portion as of the 40%, just the reasons differ.

If they wanted it to persist, why would they give up a portion of their income to end it? Are you suggesting the 40% is just more honest than the 60?

Remember it said rich-world respondents, not rich people. There are still poor people in rich-world countries that would find it painful to give up any part of what they have.

> There are still poor people in rich-world countries that would find it painful to give up any part of what they have.

Poverty is a relative concept. Even among billionaires, there are poor billionaires that would find it painful to give up any part of what they have.

I know a number of people who view basically any kind of aid as morally wrong, ultimately leading to the downfall of the people you're trying to help. Even with their own kids, once they're 18 they're on their own -- no help with college, no inheritance, no etc. They really believe that handouts create a situation worse than whatever ill they're solving.

Mind you, they still think poverty is bad, but they'd object to something like paying for basic infrastructure and be happy to create the modern-day equivalent of CCC camps to pay the poor people to build that infrastructure. That sort of thing.

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