Cash to the poor: Giving money directly works surprisingly well

Post by wahsd » Tue, Oct 29, 2013, 7:34 PM UTC

kbutler wrote: post #118

wahsd wrote: post #86

Those who have for centuries fooled the rest of humanity into believing that their unearned, illegitimate, and unwarranted elevated status is justified know the findings of this painfully obvious fact to be true. Which is why they pull out all and every stop to prevent the majority from realizing it by vilifying anyone and anything that could spread that realization.

I assume you're including yourself in that - I bet you're in the top 1/10 of 1% of income globally: http://www.globalrichlist.com/ I am far from asserting that we have a fully equitable system, of either opportunity or outcome, but remember that inequality is an unavoidable result of private property and freedom of choice. (For example, give everyone $100,000 and freedom to spend or save as they will, and check back…

Thank you for that link. Quite interesting. That being said though it is not a fair recrimination or charge. The problem is one of relative terms. Of course there should and will always be disparate income and wealth based on choices and circumstance. The problem arises in the immeasurably disparate and unbalanced nature of wealth and income distribution.

You have to keep in mind that even when talking about wealth and income distribution in the USA we are only just talking about the most obvious of disparities, the pile of snow on the tip of the iceberg. We don't talk about the value of soft disparity in things like opportunity, privilege, access, and corruption.

Your last sentence is the the one at the crux of the next step in human social and economic development. I pose that it is the linchpin keeping shackles on the vast majority of humanity.

Post by lbrent » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 10:29 PM UTC

goggles99 wrote: post #137

lbrent wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The government is full of corruption and waste, they are innefective in matters that require an actual soul. Something totally unheard of in charities or churches for that matter? > What if you could take the percentage of taxes that you spend every year and choose whom to help with it. I cannot see how this would not lead to a very disproportional distribution of welfare. Very few people, I guess, would rather giv…

>Something totally unheard of in charities or churches for that matter? The difference here is that charities can easily be replaced or you can choose a different one. There would definitely be oversight to expose problems and shut down fraudsters. >I cannot see how this would not lead to a very disproportional distribution of welfare. Very few people, I guess, would rather give their money to rehabilitated murderers…

> Also, charities generally don't "turn down" people because they just got out of jail.

No, but there are many charities that serve a very specific purpose. And I would bet that there are far more who are involved in work with children than with convicts. Actually I know there are (I have my own limited experience in this specific area), but more to this later.

> Sure those like you would give it to orphans and widows.

I would be very surprised if "those like me" would not turn out to be in the vast majority. By the way, I picked rehabilitated criminals for a reason. During and for a while after university, I was living in a self sustained formerly occupied house and we has decided to reserve one floor for former prisoners to offer an easier start back into a regular life outside of social housing. Yet over the years due to people moving out and new people moving in and lost romantic ideas (who could have guessed that most people serving long time sentences are not highly educated and politically left-leaning) of how this living together would work, a majority of the house voted the former convicts out. Some of us tried to help to set up an alternative and work together with local welfare organizations or churches, but again they either lacked funding or met resistance of their members (mainly on the side of the churches). This experience let me to doubt your plans.

But something I would really love to see, and something you might probably be able to agree on too, would be some kind of mandatory community service. Maybe one or two weeks per year in an area of choice. I think that could result in more compassion and social cohesion than "just" giving money.

Re: Cash to the poor: Giving money directly works surprisingly well

Re: Cash to the poor: Giving money directly works surprisingly well