Everyone on earth has to be poor for 5 years
Summary
A subway rider proposes that everyone on Earth should experience poverty for five mandatory years to build empathy. Not consecutively, but spread across a lifetime. The idea is simple: rich people need to feel what it's like when your card gets declined at the grocery store, when you can't give your kid something they want, when you're drowning in unemployment paperwork. Kareem loves it. Both host and rider have been there, negative bank accounts and all. They immediately form a committee to work out logistics. When does it start? Age 18. What if you're already born poor? Exemption granted. The conversation gets granular fast, mapping out poverty years at 18, 27, and 40, with a bonus two-year stretch if you have kids that counts toward their requirement. It's basically mandatory Peace Corps service, or as Kareem puts it, "like Ramadan" but you can still drink. The whole thing is absurd yet oddly compelling, two people genuinely workshopping a system to force empathy on the wealthy.
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Full Transcript
So, what's your take? Everyone on Earth has to be poor for 5 years. 100% agreed. It doesn't have to be consecutive. You don't have to do all the same time, but you got to like feel what it feels like to have insufficient funds. You got to be at a grocery store and it doesn't go through.
I actually think that that would create a massive amount of empathy. Yeah. Well, because you'll figure out what it feels like to like not be able to give your kid that thing and then you got to deal with it. Even the things of like if you're going on unemployment checks, have someone like fill out all that paperwork and put it in. You got to feel all of that energy. And then yeah, I think you'll empathize with people and I think you'll understand what's going on and then the world be a better place. And then if you're a rich person, you can see like, "Oh, you know, I don't want that for my employees." And so you can figure that out.
I think there's a lot of been there, done that. Because I don't think people know how Bingo.
hard it is. Yeah, they have no clue. It's really hard, man. I have been poor many times in my life.
Oh, yeah. My first New York City apartment, full overdraft, negative $2,000, eating milk and What?
for every meal. So, I think that that is a actually a good idea. I don't know if it's possible. We need the committee to to help us figure out all of Who's on the committee?
I don't know yet. You want to be on it? Do you want to be on the committee?
I'm on the committee, bro. You're definitely on the committee. the committee. I guess the other thing would be like the things that the committee can figure out is like if you're in the Hamptons, what's poor for someone that lives in the Hamptons? So, we got to figure all of that out. You know, these are the details that the committee will figure out.
It's like volunteering with the Peace Corps, but it's mandatory. But it's mandatory. You got to do it.
But if you're born poor There's an exemption there. You don't have to go through that again. That's crazy. And I think it activates at like 18.
Yes, but you can't go over 65. Well, we can do the poor year 18, 27, 40. I think that's when you do the 2-year.
Also, in one of those times, if you're going to have kids, you know, you can do a year or two for the kids. Cuz then it gets subtracted from theirs.
Exactly. Okay, that's nice. So, that's like pushing forward kind of energy.
That's nice. So, this is kind of like a Ramadan situation. Yes, except you could still drink and I guess do drugs. [laughter]