Soul Theory discusses the facts of life, as may be observed by all, to better understand the workings and the purpose of life. It is not based on beliefs but makes one basic assumption at creation and builds on it using observed facts of life to establish the concepts for the theory.
People in the world may be classified financially as being wealthy, gainfully employed, or poor. Wealthy people have their excessive incomes generated from their investments, gainfully employed people have their adequate hand-to-mouth incomes paid by their employers, and poor people, earning very low or no incomes, are certainly not gainfully employed. This view therefore suggests that poverty may be eradicated by getting people to be gainfully employed. In this context adequate hand-to-mouth income refers to adequate income to support a fairly good standard of living for the employee and his or her dependants. People may occasionally alternate from one financial classification to another based on prevailing circumstances.
People will at least have to earn adequate hand-to-mouth incomes to be considered as being gainfully employed. People who are gainfully employed may be further classified as being employees or entrepreneurs. Employees trade their skills for income, whilst entrepreneurs invest and work in their own businesses for profit as income. Skills may either be managerial, specialized labor, or non-skilled labor and income levels vary based on skill type and the industry return on investment. It is observed that poor people are usually non-skilled and also find themselves in industries with low returns on investments, which are therefore unable to pay adequate hand-to-mouth incomes. However, it is worth noting that non-skilled workers in high return on investment industries may earn adequate hand-to-mouth incomes.
Based on these observations, the key to eradicating poverty could be directing investments in various sectors of the economy to areas of poverty in order to create employment opportunities, whilst upgrading labor skills to meet the requirements of the emerging industries. Choice of emerging industries should also be biased towards industries with high return on investments. Attempts to eradicate poverty which do not lead to gainful employment have so far failed and shall continue to fail.
As the percentage of successful entrepreneurs tend to be rather low compared to gainfully employed people, it is an indication that very few people can succeed as entrepreneurs. This fundamental truth puts in doubt the approach to provide financial assistance for lots of poor people to go into business as entrepreneurs, as majority of them will not succeed to be gainfully employed and shall therefore continue to remain poor. The art of establishing successful businesses is limited to only few talented people, who in turn are able to provide gainful employment to several other people. The few people, be they wealthy, gainfully employed or poor, with entrepreneurial talents should therefore be encouraged to discover themselves and certainly be supported to set up their businesses to provide gainful employment as part of the poverty alleviation process.
What ever financial category one finds oneself should be understood as being part of the learning experience for a soul-driver to acquire further knowledge and experience in this world. As we are born or re-born as soul-drivers into this world with our different knowledge-profiles, we become associated with the families we are born into, thus defining our initial financial classifications in a life-cycle. Again based on our dormant knowledge-profiles at birth, and the environment in which we find ourselves, we may continue life with same financial classification or move from the initial financial classification to another. Being born into a poor family does not imply one cannot move out of poverty.
As previously suggested, one can say goodbye to poverty once he or she becomes gainfully employed, earning adequate hand-to-mouth income. However, gainfully employment calls for job creation on the part of visionary and resourceful leaders and entrepreneurs, as well as the ability to work on the part of would-be-employees. As the able-bodied would-be-employees may be given the appropriate training to develop the ability to work, the bulk of the responsibility therefore rest with the leaders and entrepreneurs to provide the required training, and also make jobs available for people to become gainfully employed and therefore not poor.
In this present world we have very few people with the appropriate knowledge–profiles as talented leaders, and we have many more people with other talents but not the leadership talent, and therefore need to be mobilized, as human resources, by talented leaders, for them to achieve their potentials. Failure on the part of leaders to ensure people are gainfully employed has certainly been and continues to be a contributing factor to poverty. It is when talented leadership is lacking in communities that people fail to achieve their potential, and not being gainfully employed, fall into the poverty classification. Talented and resourceful leadership when lacking in a community, may be available in other communities, and therefore need to be sought from outside the community. The community may be a village, a township, or even a country.
To eradicate poverty, communities need to be led by talented, visionary and resourceful leaders who will direct investments into the communities to create jobs and also provide required training for people in the communities to become gainfully employed. Once gainfully employed, one is also able to provide as well for the health and education of the dependants, thus breaking the cycle of poverty, and aid to the poor becomes a thing of the past. Available funds, for poverty alleviation, from all sources, including funds from donors, could be invested in high return on investment job creation ventures and training opportunities leading to gainful employment.
Using the Soul Theory approach, observations in life have been made regarding the financial well being of people, arriving at the above discussed conclusions and recommendations on poverty alleviation.
08-05-2007 04:59 PM 
