Simply Put: The most effective way to end poverty for youth is through education. For adults, the end to povery is through micro-enterprise loans. Muhammad Yunus proved this in his book "Banker to the Poor". The concept is to loan poor people money, promote financial principles to live by, and they will help themselves. It is an inspiring book. Interesting, too, because 95% of the people loaned money through Grameen Bank are woman and the loan repayment is almost 100%. Too bad the rest of the world doesn't recognize the vital role and potential of women in this world.

Poverty is a complicated problem and it demands a thorough and complex solution.

I believe we can eliminate poverty in this country (the United States) and others by following a comprehensive planned aimed at instituting and improving the following:

Education

Healthcare

Income Equality

Mental Healthcare

Progressive Drug Policies

Racial/gender/ethnic/nationality/ sexuality Equality

Education:

Universal, free education should be provided for children and adults from pre-school to college. Anyone who wants to attend a university should be given the funds to do so (though colleges have every right to be selective). We are entering into a new era of technology and industrial/service development, anyone without a good education will find it nearly impossible to progress up the social and economic ladder.

We also don't need people who are supposed to be learning valuable skills distracted by their escalating debt, having to work a job (and in some cases raise children) while studying for exams, writing papers, and doing research. We need to give single mothers and fathers, your typical college youngster, and older adults every opportunity to advance their knowledge and skill.

We've already seen, in nations such as Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan what a highly educated society can do in terms of economic growth and development. These tiny islands, city-states, and peninsulas are far more productive and prosperous than some of the largest nations populating this world.

Healthcare:

It is the greatest source of bankruptcy in the United States. Poor health contributes to a decline in workforce productivity and costs individuals and societies greatly. Full, free healthcare services for all allows the kind of preventative care that can significantly drop healthcare costs in general (even lower than non-socialized healthcare systems) and create a workforce that is happy and healthy, allowing them to create, build, discover, invent, research, develop, and buy. For you capitalists I provide this helpful saying: a dead citizen is a dead consumer.

Income Equality amounts to a dramatic decrease in poverty and a dramatic increase in consumer demand. When wealth is highly concentrated it doesn't get spent, a man or woman can only buy so much. Even though such hoarded wealth is typically resting inside banks, which try to invest such capital, there is no reason to invest when the demand isn't there.

When wealth distribution programs such as progressive taxes, welfare, government programs, projects, and services, and government grants, non-interest loans, and investing are allowed to do their job consumers, the average person, will see their pockets swell (which will then go back into tills and vaults of businesses around the country).

Mental Healthcare:

This is the same for physical care, only the effects of improper mental healthcare structures are not well known. What is known is that people with mental disorders are not productive, or happy. The impoverished and homeless have high rates of mental disorder, in many cases someone with severe mental illness will find themselves out on the streets due to the lack of friends and family able or willing to care for them.

Those with less severe mental disorders are still disadvantaged when it comes to the economic sphere; they find operating in rigid structures with people who are not understanding of their affliction or difference difficult if not impossible.

Progressive Drug Policies:

Large numbers of people are thrown into jails for what is essentially a victim-less crime. With drug crimes on their record (especially for the hard drugs) finding a good job, getting government loans to enter college, finding a college that will accept you..etc..etc...becomes much more difficult.

Of course, hard-users find themselves at the mercy of an addiction that consumes their life. They can't hold down much, if any work. Without proper rehabilitative services these people will be locked in a state of substance abuse and poverty.

General Equality:

There are millions of people with ideas that will bring themselves, their communities, and their families out of poverty. The brilliance and ingenuity of these people would not only enrich themselves but the entire country (the world, perhaps). The next Einstein, Edison, Roosevelt, or Madam Curie could be found in the ghettos and inner cities of the United States. The cure for cancer could be in the hands of a young black girl, or a Latino boy. A homosexual might have the right mind to lead armies into victorious battle; a girl might have within her the power to bring us bases on Mars.

We lock these people into poverty and ourselves into economic and scientific darkness by keeping certain groups of people oppresses, suppressed, and isolated.

I know that was long, sorry for that. I hope some of my argument was helpful and will bring about a fairly lively debate.

To destroy poverty you must destroy the roots of poverty. The cause of poverty is fundamentally a problem of capitalism in it's defining characteristic of the extraction of surplus-value from labour.

Today we have embodied in society the means to end poverty, we have the contradiction of private property, of capitalism, in the modern proletariat.

Modern society is like no other. We have industry on a scale sufficient to satisfy the needs of all those in poverty, we have enough agricultural product to satisfy every hungry mouth. Why do we have poverty? Capitalism, the mindless search for profits overriding real human needs.

The destruction of capitalism is the destruction of poverty

(If anyone says "Communism is poverty" you are a moron, read Marx you philistine)

Perhaps it isn't as impossible as some people think, here's a rather interesting article:

http://www.sciam.com/ article.cfm?id=the-social-welfare-state

Women's suffrage.

Increasing the rights of women in impoverished regions has historically preceded the most radical changes in the median economic status of the general population.

This doesn't just depend on their legal status, but also their perceived status culturally.

Poverty is a measure of the ability of a social infrastructure (social wealth) to provide for the needs (and less so, desires) of a population. So the simple math becomes something "Wealth divided by Population". This gives us two things to change to cure poverty:

1) Increase Social Wealth. More technological infrastructure means a better ability to create food and shelter, or to decrease the costs of these. Education increases a society's ability to do the same. Other factors include things like social stability (ability to pursue freedom / happiness versus various fears), raw resources (technology can increase the efficiencies and find new alternatives), and so on.

2) Decrease Population. No, not shooting people (that causes social instability and fear): ubiquitous, cheap and easy to use contraception.

The most effective method of curing poverty would be to change the mindset of those who thing it is possible to cure it with a single method.

Poverty exists for many reasons and simplistic dreaming is not going to end it.

Some reasons are political. Some are economic. Some are academic. Some are psychological. The list goes on, is long, and the problem is like a Gordian knot. No single sword is going to cleave it.

But a good start would be simply to admit this is the case and admit as well that the causes rest just as much in the choices and behaviors of the poverty-stricken as in the choices and behaviors of those who make money, succeed, or gain from the presence of poverty.

Thus, the most effective method of curing poverty is thinking... because until everyone accepts this is the case, no other method will work.

Removal of an economy and ultimately a culture that rewards self interest "Capitalism", and I'm not talking about replacing it with Communism.

Redistribute the wealth every 10 years.

End corruption in governments so countries can enjoy the riches provided by their resources.

The most effective way to end poverty, strictly speaking, would be to erase all records of the concept from our society. Eliminate the word. Change news articles and media to reflect the new paradigm. Within a generation people will forget the concept.

Oh, the practical and applicable things one can learn from 1984!

killing

Personal responsibility.BOOM That easy

Get a job!

The most effective way to end poverty is to kill them. I mean, it's not like anyone is going to miss them. We sure as hell don't need them because they are not productive and they seem to suck up our resources in the form of welfare. We may be able to recycle them somehow; as organ donors or something. Besides, you start killing enough of them and the others will find work almost immediately. It may not be the cleanest solution but we should at least give it a try. I mean, if you're reading this you're probably not poor so what the hell do you care?