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by bourgwaletariat 1860 days ago
Millionaires say, "Give your children enough money to do something, but not enough money to do nothing."

It applies across the board. Studies of poverty traps provide evidence of learned helplessness. If you're rich, most things that go wrong can be solved with money. If you're poor, money isn't a solution to any problem.

Even $500 a month solves a lot of problems that will enable the individual to get out of a hole they'd otherwise die in.

There are producers and there are consumers. For millennia, the benefit of the work done by productive people has flowed, disproportionately to unproductive people.

Society is revolting at the unfairness. Rich folks get more than $500/mo on their mortgage interest deduction. Poor people have nothing. Get nothing. Work hard barely to survive.

The lack of equity is destroying society. Our human contract with each other is being honored by one set of people and not by another. Selective application of rules is resentful.

There are producers and there are consumers. The producers aren't going to stop producing because the government gives them food, water, and shelter. These are basic human needs. Basic needs for any living organism. We treat other humans worse than animals, yet they are.

We have to change our collective consciousness and be honest with ourselves or we won't progress civilly.

2 comments

I posted this link because it demonstrates that policies locally (in this case, a city) can make a meaningful difference, while efforts are underway (but take longer) to enable robust social safety nets at scale using public policy. It’s also a valuable datapoint from a behavioral economics perspective. For many, if help is provided, they can succeed.
$500 tax free is quite a lot of money to a low income person. That's nearly two weeks of work at minimum wage; probably a bit more than that after factoring in taxes.
It's not a lot of money. It's $1.8 Trillion a year if we gave it to every American. The GDP of the USA is $21 Trillion, so we are talking about 10% of our GDP going to eliminate poverty.

Remember, in 2008, we gave about $17 Trillion to the banks.

It's a lot of money to a poor person.

The fact that it's also not a lot of money to the economy in general just amplifies how little is needed to make a big difference to a lot of people.

I agree. I think the $500 tax savings home owners get makes not a lot of difference in their lives and simultaneously, they'll believe they earned it, while scoffing at the idea of giving free money to someone who has none.

We're not very ... self-aware as a society.