>You can extend this thought to poverty in general. Very little would need to change to eliminate it entirely. To be fair, many of the "rough edges" of poverty

>You can extend this thought to poverty in general. Very little would need to change to eliminate it entirely. To be fair, many of the "rough edges" of poverty have been sanded down over the past 100 years or so in most developed countries. Poor people no longer face debtor's prison, starvation, lack of access to health care (with the exception of one notable country), a complete lack of education, lack of plumbing/utilities etc. In addition to this, much of Asia and parts of Africa and South America have graduated from dirt poor to middle or high income nations. That's not to say we couldn't do more, but the trend seems to be favouring the elimination or at least a sharp reduction in (absolute) poverty for the forseeable future, both in developing and developed nations.