POVERTY IS FOUGHT WITH WORK, NOT “WITH CHARITY” SAYS CARLOS SLIM

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In other words, you do not end poverty by giving away fish, but by teaching how to fish.

The Mexican businessman, considered the richest man in Mexico, said that the best way to help the poor is by generating employment.

The only way to eliminate poverty is by creating sources of employment, not “with charity or social welfare public policies,” said Mexican businessman Carlos Slim, the richest man in Mexico.

At the Forum of Latin American democracy, at the Mining Palace in Mexico City, Slim said that if he could end poverty “giving 300, 400 or 500 dollars to each Mexican, I would love it, I would do it with pleasure” , because he is convinced that “poverty benefits no one more than perhaps some demagogue politicians”.

However, he argued that the best social investment is not to give resources to people, but to devote them to “nutrition, health, education and employment, employment and more employment.”

“I have insisted many times that the only way that I see for the population to come out of poverty is not with charity, nor with public social welfare policies but with employment,” he said.

According to Slim, in the last 50 or 100 years, “trillions of dollars have been spent combating poverty, forgiving debts, creating food and health programs,” without obtaining the desired results.

The businessman, majority shareholder of Telmex, the largest telephone company in Mexico and one of the largest in America, said that companies and their owners have the responsibility to pay taxes and generate productivity, but those tasks also correspond to civil society.

Academics and civil organizations point out that Slim’s companies control the markets where they operate, preventing other companies from entering or affecting competitors.

Slim defended the existence of large companies by stating that “it is perverse to think that in countries that are not very rich, there must be very poor companies and that the only wealthy companies in our country have to be foreign.”

“I think that is a wrong idea or a perverse attitude or a policy seeking other ends,” he said.

Source: expansion, latin money

The Mazatlan Post