Poverty Finally Solved When Everyone Just Tries Harder

By Daniel Moattar

Feb. 24, 2014

A collaborative research project of the MIT Sloan School of Economics and the University of Chicago’s Becker Friedman Institute claims to have produced an unorthodox solution to global poverty: poor people could just work harder. “For too long,” said co-author Charles Janowitz (A.B. ’88), American economists have labored under the misconception that opportunity is limited: where some succeed, others must fail. Our results reveal that the contrary is true. Even the humblest of jobs, providing incomes at or below the poverty line, can yield immense riches if one simply works enough hours at it.”There really is enough to go around in this economy, for welfare queens and Wall Street kings, and anyone else prepared to work the 29 or more hours per day dictated by our model.”

The study, conducted with the aid of former University Professor Milton Friedman via Ouija board, posits a future in which no less than 89% of Americans could own two or more private islands by the year 2024, if they could only get off their no-good, lazy asses and invest their food money carefully. Policies like the federal minimum wage and Earned Income Tax Credit, unfortunately, provide no impetus for America’s lazy poor to do so. “Government handouts aren’t helping anyone,” said the authors of the four-year NIH/NSF-funded study, whose co-author is employed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Elements of the study have been characterized as “mathematically deficient,” even “loony,” by detractors, but Janowitz and collaborator Veronica Milovic (Ph.D ’95) remain defiant. “That’s just what they said about trickle-down economics,” Milovic said. “We proved otherwise, with a little help from a Tarot deck. It’s all about that King of Swords, baby. I’m talking about the slick-haired, grinning face of President Ronald Reagan. You know what he told us? It’s time the working poor and society’s leeches doubled down, cowboyed up, and gave a hundred fifty percent.”

“All the trash TV doesn’t help, either,” said Janowitz. “Sadly, it seems America’s disadvantaged masses would rather catch up on the latest episode of Project Runway than drag themselves into a higher tax bracket. If this study has taught us anything, it’s to DVR that shit and set it aside – ideally for when you’re rich.” “Hail Reagan,” the authors concluded, linking hands in a simultaneous chant.