Funding Visions – Solving the World’s Problems

 

The Northwestern Poverty Mitigation Project – An Introduction – by David L. Paul – January 7, 2025

 

We have the technology and resources to effectively end homelessness, hunger, and poverty in America. But we simply no not know how to do this in ways that would be economically, politically, and socially acceptable. The Northwestern Poverty Mitigation Project (NPMP) seeks to demonstrate that if we simultaneously make policy changes in the areas of income, healthcare, education, and housing that mitigate root cause issues we can effectively end homelessness, hunger, and poverty in an economically, politically, and socially acceptable way.    

 

This document briefly describes NPMP theory and a preliminary set of income, healthcare, education, and housing policy changes. Six key elements of NPMP are outlined below:  

 

INCOME

HEALTHCARE

EDUCATION

HOUSING

EMPLOYMENT

THEORY

 

Collectively these policy changes will:

 

  1. raise all American incomes above the poverty line.
  2. give all Americans access to quality healthcare with a focus on preventive care and lifestyle choices.
  3. help students to understand and deal with the non-academic experiences they may encounter in life.
  4. expand the role local schools play in mitigating local social, economic, and/or political issues.
  5. give all Americans access to affordable housing by building quality housing at lower costs.

 

Each of the proposed policy changes have the following characteristics:

 

  1. They are well known and have been extensively studied.
  2. They address root issues that are causing social problems.
  3. They only effect communities that voluntary adopt them.
  4. They will have little or no effect on the situations of most Americans.
  5. They would not be feasible and effectively mitigate our homelessness hunger, and poverty problems if implemented by themselves.

 

However, when refined and implemented together, the set of policy changes may become feasible and mitigate many of our social problems because:

 

  1. Economically NPMP will cost less than what we are now spending to mitigate our homelessness, hunger, and poverty problems.

 

  1. Politically NPMP will be acceptable to conservatives (who want less government, lower taxes, balanced budgets and more individual responsibility) and liberals (who want fewer social problems, more equal resource allocations, and more equal opportunities).

 

  1. Socially NPMP will support traditional American values.

 

Developing NPMP will require intensive discussions, research, refinements and pilot projects. These activities will generate a long list of reasons why NPMP will not work as intended. However, by using this list, we can engineer a set of policy changes that will be more acceptable. This process needs to be repeated until a generally acceptable set of policy changes is found.

 

Pursuing this project can be challenging because it requires evaluating the impacts of simultaneously implementing policy changes in many different areas (income, healthcare, education, housing) and from many different points of view (economically, politically, and socially). This can be difficult to coordinate in an academic environment where everyone specializes. There is no department of holistic studies to coordinate such activities.  

 

We are looking for a group that is qualified and interested in coordinating these efforts. If you know of such a group, please email david@fundingvisions.org

 

A more detailed but still general description of the NPMP plan with some supporting documentation can be found in the book Redesigning America for the 21st Century: Solving our Healthcare, Income, Education, and Housing Problems 

 

For more information email David@fundingvisions.org

Please note: Funding Visions does not solicit, nor does it accept, donations.