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

Re: To help poor people, give them money

#51

Post by logfromblammo » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 10:05 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.

And if you hold neither of those positions, the mainstream political parties automatically treat you as though you hold the position that they oppose.

Some of us would prefer to replace the entire welfare system with simple automated scripts.

  if( 0 != ImmNatSvc.GetStatus( person ) & ( CITIZEN|PERM_RES|ASYLUM|REFUGEE|NONIMM_WORK ))
  {
      Treasury.DistributeBasicIncome( person );
  }

Re: To help poor people, give them money

#52

Post by walsh-cloonagh » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 10:07 PM UTC

Mikeb85 wrote: post #20

walsh-cloonagh wrote: post #5

It is possible to save a life for $3,340 by donating to the Against Malaria Foundation [1]. Helping desperately poor people is a surely virtuous thing to do and helping them efficiently by giving them money via GiveDirectly, as suggested in this article and the linked 2003 NYT article, is all the better. But, right now there are worse things to be than desperately poor: like being a kid in Africa who dies of malaria…

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…

Giving out mosquito nets to conquer malaria makes as much sense as giving out medical masks to conquer the flu.

77% of maleria deaths are kids under 5 according to the WHO [1]. They're giving out mosquito nets to prevent children from dying of malaria.

But we don't live with malaria, so feel-good gestures are as far as we go.

For every 322 children under 5 protected by nets, one survives who would otherwise die [2]. This isn't the right thing to be cynical about.

[1] http://www.who.int/gho/malaria/epidemic/deaths/en/ [2] http://www.givewell.org/files/DWDA%202009/Interventions/Nets...

Re: To help poor people, give them money

#53

Post by charlesdm » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 10:07 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.

Then they didn't build wealth, they generated income.

Re: To help poor people, give them money

#54

Post by pdeuchler » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 10:07 PM UTC

Giving money to the poor merely elevates those who received the money over a new generation of "poor" and does nothing to actually stop the systems that create poverty in the first place. If you would like to actually reduce the net amount of "poor people", instead of simply creating a revolving door for individuals, you give money to the middle class.

Or, phrased differently: Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he feeds himself and his family while selling the excess for discretionary income :)

Re: To help poor people, give them money

#55

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 10:08 PM UTC

thedevil wrote: post #11

jack-r-abbit wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And logically, if the poor as a group were good with money, they wouldn't be poor. Sorry, but that is not really logical. Many people are poor simply because they don't earn enough money. There is a difference.

By "as a group" I meant most. Most poor people I know are poor because of their choices or because of the place they live. Neither of which are fixed with cash.

[deleted]

Re: To help poor people, give them money

#56

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 10:08 PM UTC

thedevil wrote: post #11

jack-r-abbit wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And logically, if the poor as a group were good with money, they wouldn't be poor. Sorry, but that is not really logical. Many people are poor simply because they don't earn enough money. There is a difference.

By "as a group" I meant most. Most poor people I know are poor because of their choices or because of the place they live. Neither of which are fixed with cash.

> Most poor people I know

Which, clearly, are a representative sample of the poor people in the society at large.

> are poor because of their choices or because of the place they live. Neither of which are fixed with cash.

Since changing the place you live often is generally not free of cost, I don't see how that follows for the "place they live" group.

To the extent that the "choices" group is past rather than current choices, I don't see how that works for that group, either. (Heck, even with current choices, choices are constrained by the available options, which cash does change.)

Re: To help poor people, give them money

#57

Post by shadowfiend » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 10:11 PM UTC

Mikeb85 wrote: post #20

walsh-cloonagh wrote: post #5

It is possible to save a life for $3,340 by donating to the Against Malaria Foundation [1]. Helping desperately poor people is a surely virtuous thing to do and helping them efficiently by giving them money via GiveDirectly, as suggested in this article and the linked 2003 NYT article, is all the better. But, right now there are worse things to be than desperately poor: like being a kid in Africa who dies of malaria…

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…

Please do a detailed reading of the linked evaluation of the Against Malaria Foundation. There is a fairly rigorous discussion of the impact on both fatal and non-fatal potential malaria infections, as well as how the evaluation is done. While anecdotal evidence is more emotionally powerful, there seems to be pretty strong large-scale evidence that at least in the places AMF targets, the nets are effective at a relatively low cost.

Re: To help poor people, give them money

#58

Post by thedevil » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 10:12 PM UTC

kstenerud wrote: post #39

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…

The point of basic income is to provide a baseline level of stability. There are many things that lead to poverty, but it is the inherent instability that traps people there. When there is a monthly stipend that someone knows they can rely on no matter what happens (getting sick, losing their job, family emergency), they are suddenly capable of thinking beyond immediate needs. Many people caught in the poverty trap k…

I wonder, do you know about countries that have done serious experiments with basic income? It seems interesting although risky.

Re: To help poor people, give them money

#59

Post by dllthomas » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 10:12 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…

Giving poor people who make bad decisions money may help them make better decisions. Recent studies have shown that the stress of persistent poverty diminishes cognitive capacity. To the degree that is the case, giving people money (and especially reliable money) may not only give them more options and better options, but help them pick better amongst their options.

Re: To help poor people, give them money

#60

Post by mangeletti » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 10:13 PM UTC

pdeuchler wrote: post #54

Giving money to the poor merely elevates those who received the money over a new generation of "poor" and does nothing to actually stop the systems that create poverty in the first place. If you would like to actually reduce the net amount of "poor people", instead of simply creating a revolving door for individuals, you give money to the middle class. Or, phrased differently: Give a man a fish and he eats for a day.…

+1, and if some of that discretionary income is saved, he can lease it out for rent (make loans). This trend can continue for generations until the snowball effect is such that majority of the world's wealth has been accumulated by about .001% of the population; but then, people will start talking about things like transfer payments[1] and basic income, etc.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfer_payment