It has been done in small countries (North Europe and Singapore comes to mind) and resource rich countries (Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates .. only 7% of population of UAE are Emiratis .. and they get free education, healthcare, plum jobs after college, free land and housing, marriage expenses etc .. Saudi Arabia must be similar being next door and wealthier)
But it has not happened in any large country (population at least few dozen million)
There are two aspects to this -
A ) Poverty in undeveloped and developing countries
India is set to overtake China as the most populous nation soon but at current rate India will have peak population of 1.7 billion in 2060 and then it will start to decline .. this is one place where prediction will come true since all around me I can see people having one child by choice .. Even if the world population stabilizes at around 9 billion how can everyone be provided with a job, a house, a retirement plan?
Every citizen of India, Brazil, China, Philippines aspiring to even most basic First World amenities will cause environment to collapse and oil to go to $400 per barrel (thus sending the whole world into economic chaos)
B ) Poverty in developed countries
Leave aside USA and the problem of homeless people using Starbucks restrooms .. upper 1% in Germany holds a personal wealth of at least 800,000 euros ($1.09 million), whilst over 25% of all adults have either no wealth or negative wealth due to debt. That is startling.
About Europe in general -
Europe consists of some of the world's finest countries not only in terms of wealth and GDP per capita but very little corruption, educated and sincere civil servants, an active and vocal civil society .. and they cannot get rid of poverty .. how can USA or Brazil do so?Unequal distribution of wealth surpasses that of income. The 10 % of wealthiest households hold 50% of total wealth; the 40 % least wealthy own little over 3 %.
https://www.oecd.org/els/soc/cope-divid ... report.pdf
Even Canada has 5 - 9% poor and 1% of its population is homeless.
Should we accept once and for all that poverty is going to be there .. that it cannot be wiped out entirely?