I heard another story about this line of research that's been going around for a long time - that the data shows in multiple studies that the easiest and most effective way to assist the poor is just to give them money, no strings attached. From NPR:
The researchers identified about 65,000 households across an impoverished, rural area of Kenya and then randomly assigned them to various groups: those who got no help from GiveDirectly and a "treatment group" of about 10,500 families who got a one-time cash grant of about $1,000.
"That's a really big income transfer," notes Miguel.
"About three-quarters of the income of the [recipient] households for a
year on average." It also represented a flood of cash into the wider
communities where they lived. "The cash transfers were something like
17% of total local income — local GDP," says Miguel.
Eighteen months on, the researchers found that, as expected, the families who got the money used it to buy lots more food and other essentials.
But that was just the beginning.
"That money goes to local businesses," says Miguel. "They sell more. They generate more revenue. And then eventually that gets passed on into labor earnings for their workers."
The net effect: Every dollar in cash aid increased total economic activity in the area by $2.60.
But were those income gains simply washed out by a corresponding rise in inflation?
"We actually find there's a little bit of price inflation, but it's really small," says Miguel. "It's much less than 1%."
The study — recently unveiled at a conference of the National Bureau of Economic Research and soon to be available on its website — also uncovered some evidence for why prices didn't go up: A lot of local businesses reported that before the cash infusion they weren't that busy.
"They may be a shopkeeper that doesn't really have that many customers [because] it's a poor area. They may be someone working at a grain mill that only has one or two customers an hour."
So when they suddenly get more
customers, they don't have to take extra steps like hiring more workers
that would drive up their costs — and their prices. In economic
parlance, there was enough "slack" in the local economy to absorb the
injection of cash.
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Read more:
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/12/02/781152563/researchers-find-a-remarkable-ripple-effect-when-you-give-cash-to-poor-families
https://www.oecd.org/dev/pgd/46240619.pdf
https://www.rienner.com/uploads/553a9642e0c0a.pdf
10 comments:
I'm pretty sure I posted a civil, thoughtful comment here.
I haven't seen it and the odds are against it.
At least two problems:
1. If I'm striving, deliberately, for more gold, then I'm placing myself in the place of a trap for deceit and evil. "Do not store for yourselves treasures here on earth..." IF one is one to take Jesus fairly literally, that's a serious warning (along with all the others).
2. "Charity," as far as it goes, is what it is. But it's not justice. Me giving to the poor and marginalized puts us in a "I'M the giver and YOU are the poor recipient. Receive my largesse and be Better for it..." It's not as healthy as merely helping/allying with the poor and marginalized to get the justice due to them. I tend towards working for justice in alliance with the poor and marginalized, as opposed to me, the Great White Hope, giving of my great abundance TO them.
It has to do with justice and decency and comradery, as opposed to humiliating "charity..."
But you're good with expecting those with the gold to give. You don't help when YOU "ally" with the poor, because you reject that which truly helps them. In our country, you now have your great white hope Biden making life more difficult for even many who had at least a little gold to sustain them. You drool out your platitudes but accomplish nothing for anyone.
HAPPY MARIA MONTESSORI and GIUSEPPE VERDI DAY!
They slaughtered no one. They enslaved no one.
They raised children to be creative and communal and inspired the deepest of feelings within.
They gave their gold away
A study from the University of Virginia looked at 2,000 young adults, half of whom had some Montessori education. Those who had at least two years of Montessori experience got better wellbeing scores than those who didn’t.
My kids both were Montessori school students, K-5th grade. Turned out pretty well. Thank God for Maria Montessori, as well as some pretty good public school teachers, K-12.
Marshal...
But you're good with expecting those with the gold to give.
As someone in the middle class of America, I AM good with me and others like me paying more than those with less. And I'm good with those who've benefited the most - and to an extreme - from our system paying even more.
What's wrong with that? From those who have received much, much will be expected. It's practically biblical!
You don't help when YOU "ally" with the poor, because you reject that which truly helps them.
I disagree. We at my church ally with poor and middle-class churches, black and white and Latino and LGBTQ and Jewish, across the city in the form of a Direct Action group and we've gained money for low income housing, improved health insurance options, support for children struggling in schools, for the un-housed and mentally ill, etc, and our allyship has resulted in cold hard data-driven improvements for the poor and marginalized.
The data disagrees with your unsupported claim. That I disagree with what YOU might think doesn't mean I reject that which helps the poor and marginalized. Indeed, part of our process is to raise concerns collectively, listening to the poor, the marginalized, the mentally ill, the un-housed, the immigrants... listening to their concerns and what they say will help them. We also listen to the experts who have researched the areas of concern that are raised by these marginalized groups and then we, step-by-step, take actions to implement changes to areas of concern raised literally and specifically by the poor and marginalized and literally based upon research and data and have had pretty good successes.
We've managed, for instance, to have our city set aside $10 million a year for affordable housing support and, as a result, affordable housing has increased. There is need for a great deal more, but the effort has had measurable results.
So, you can have unsupported hunches and make baseless accusations, but I'm more interested in the data and reality, not your unsupported and rather baseless hunches. So, if you have NO data to support your claims, move on. Remember the rules: Unsupported claims will not remain.
Why did you delete my totally on topic comments, none of which are baseless accusations. You're only interested in "data" which seems to support your preconceived notions and hunches.
And it's really easy to delete my comments on the false claim of "unsupported claims"...which is ironic since yours is unsupported. It's cheap and cowardly, as is so routine. Note that such never happens at my blog, as I prefer honesty.
In the meantime, my point is solid and not something which requires support. You are more than free to give as much as you want. You are more than free of encouraging others to do as well. You are covetous in forcing others to give, through taxes or any other means simply because YOU insist they must, as if they have no say in the matter. It's their money. Let them give to whom they please when they please if they please.
People don't "benefit from our system". The put forth effort to achieve and succeed because our system is set up so that anyone and everyone can who wants to try. But because some aren't smart enough, gifted enough or determined enough you think you can demand anyone beyond yourself must give? There's no Biblical basis for that crap.
So keep deleting, you cowardly liar. You're a hypocrite.
I don't know where the comment went. I didn't delete anything. I've been busy.
I don't have a history of making false claims or referencing conspiracy theories. That's one of the consequences of you making repeated unsupported and clearly stupidly false claims is that, NOW, you have to support your claims if you make them. Your actions have consequences. Silly, ridiculous claims that are clearly false from you will not remain.
Live with the consequences of your actions and support claims or just move on.
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