To help poor people, give them money • Hacker News Board

Re: To help poor people, give them money

#41

Post by JoeAltmaier » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 10:01 PM UTC

jack-r-abbit wrote: post #36

charlesdm wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of wealthy people (mainly inherited) who became poor after bad investments. But, obviously if you have significant amounts of capital, it's harder to lose it all.

Also plenty of wealthy people that completely earned their money themselves but still ended up poor once the fat pay checks stopped coming. Athletes and musicians are probably the most obvious examples.

But if the paychecks don't stop coming, then nobody is poor. And suffering is alleviated.

Re: To help poor people, give them money

#42

Post by gph » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 10:01 PM UTC

ianferrel wrote: post #13

The best way to help poor people who make reasonably good decisions is to give them money. People who make bad decisions often end up poor. Giving them money will not help them make better decisions, and may make them worse off. How you think those two effects interact, and how much you value efficiency of donation vs. enabling people with poor decision making skills to waste probably determines where you stand on th…

I would say the majority of people that are poor didn't end up that way, they were born or thrust into it. The amount of people who become poor purely through their own actions is not reflective of the overall population. Most people, myself included, will make both good and bad decisions throughout their lives. Those with money/education/stability can weather the bad and thrive under the good. I've had difficult periods in my life that probably would have left me in a terrible position if I didn't have a middle class support system.

Maybe at some point after we give poor people a bunch of money those who become poor again we can say are clearly making poor decisions. I believe most poor people are generally good people. We shouldn't leave a majority of people in the position they are in simply because some of them will waste it on bad decisions (drugs, etc.). This doesn't have to be a permanent thing, but the best charity at this point is probably to give people money.

Re: To help poor people, give them money

#43

Post by zo1 » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 10:01 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #25

Mikeb85 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Malaria generally kills only the young and weak. It's like the flu over here. The problem is malnutrition. Hence why a large amount of mosquito nets are never used to sleep under, but rather as fishing nets. I know people who have had malaria (family that lives in a tropical 3rd world country). All survived. Giving out mosquito nets to conquer malaria makes as much sense as giving out medical masks to conquer the flu…

Confused: you can't 'have had' malaria, its a lifetime affliction isn't it?

You can get re-infected. As far as I know, it doesn't stay dormant in your body (like say Herpes). But I'm not a doctor, just had it a few mild times as a kid.

Re: To help poor people, give them money

#44

Post by harrumph » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 10:02 PM UTC

mangeletti wrote: post #33

This works in small experiments because when you give money to a small group of poor people (A) within a larger group of poor people (B), group A gains leverage compared to their prior position and compared to group B. When you give money to all poor people, the net result is simply inflation[1]. If transfer payments were made to taper up from max(wealth) (receives $0) to min(wealth) (receives $average(wealth)), disp…

Hahahahahahaha

Re: To help poor people, give them money

#45

Post by charlesdm » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 10:03 PM UTC

PythonicAlpha wrote: post #29

charlesdm wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of wealthy people (mainly inherited) who became poor after bad investments. But, obviously if you have significant amounts of capital, it's harder to lose it all.

You can always find examples for all sides. But it is just a statistical fact, that moving up from being really poor today has become much more difficult than it was decades before, maybe with the exemption of being a computer scientists (but also there it is not so easy for a normally gifted person to finish studies and so on without help from the parents).

Is it? On what are you basing that assumption? I can't imagine it was ever easy.

Re: To help poor people, give them money

#46

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 10:03 PM UTC

rrss1122 wrote: post #17

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Negative income tax is certainly a very interesting idea, but it is virtually unheard of as a position in any mainstream U.S. political compass. It's generally considered that you either want to expand the current, highly convoluted system, or that you loathe welfare entirely as a matter of principle.

I think tax credits already accomplish this to a degree. The poor are more likely to have children, and they can already claim those children for tax credit, for example.

Child tax credits don't fully offset the cost of raising a child, so they aren't really a substitute for negative income tax.

Re: To help poor people, give them money

#47

Post by joshuapants » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 10:04 PM UTC

rrss1122 wrote: post #17

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Negative income tax is certainly a very interesting idea, but it is virtually unheard of as a position in any mainstream U.S. political compass. It's generally considered that you either want to expand the current, highly convoluted system, or that you loathe welfare entirely as a matter of principle.

I think tax credits already accomplish this to a degree. The poor are more likely to have children, and they can already claim those children for tax credit, for example.

It seems that you only get $1000 tax credit per child. That probably eases the burden on people who are going to have children in the first place, but is still net negative and doesn't do anything for people who aren't going to have children.

Re: To help poor people, give them money

#48

Post by greeneggs » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 10:04 PM UTC

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #6

kaa2102 wrote: post #3

Conservatives, progressives, and libertarians call it different things. Basic income, negative tax rate, social safety net, etc. Milton Friedman advocated for a negative effective tax rate for low income folks. Rand Paul recommended not taxing (Federally) folks who make less than $50k USD. We also need to consider micro and macro-economics. Folks with less money have a high marginal propensity to consume or likelihoo…

Negative income tax is certainly a very interesting idea, but it is virtually unheard of as a position in any mainstream U.S. political compass. It's generally considered that you either want to expand the current, highly convoluted system, or that you loathe welfare entirely as a matter of principle.

In the US, the Earned Income Tax Credit is similar to a negative income tax, and has bipartisan support (it was expanded under Clinton, Bush and Obama, for example). Economists love it, too.

Re: To help poor people, give them money

#49

Post by zo1 » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 10:05 PM UTC

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #16

thedevil wrote: post #4

This article seems naive, at best. Time after time, when I've helped family members with cash, it winds up getting wasted horribly and helping them less than it hurt me to give it to them. When I help them with what they need, their situation improves. And logically, if the poor as a group were good with money, they wouldn't be poor. Yet the article asks me to abandon reason and experience because there's some "a gro…

Just as logical as saying that if the wheelchair-bound were better at walking, they wouldn't be in wheelchairs. Poor people are often living anxiously one emergency from total bankruptcy, eating cheap, non-nutritious foods, living in uncomfortable or dangerous housing, etc. They'd need to be more than just good with money, they'd need to be brilliant.

This doesn't make sense. I pay a quarter (or more) of my total income so that government can take care of these individuals. Food, basic nutrition, basic safety, etc.

This should be a solved problem.

Re: To help poor people, give them money

#50

Post by dllthomas » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 10:05 PM UTC

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #26

thedevil wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Just as logical as saying that if the wheelchair-bound were better at walking, they wouldn't be in wheelchairs." Yeah, that's a good analogy to show my point. You don't throw someone on a wheelchair on their feet and hope it goes well. Just like you don't give a poor person a wad of money and hope it goes well.

No, the analogy was intended to compare a condition (poverty) with another (paralysis), not a tool (money) with another (wheelchair).

Actually, lack of money seemed to play the same role as presence of wheelchair in the above...