Free money might be the best way to end poverty.

Washington Post ^ | undated, but published: December 29 | Rutger Bregman

[afraidfortherepublic]

In May 2009, a small experiment involving 13 homeless men took off in London. Some of them had slept in the cold for more than 40 years. The presence of these street veterans was far from cheap. Police, legal services, health care: Each cost taxpayers thousands of pounds every year.

That spring, a local charity decided to make the street veterans — sometimes called rough sleepers — the beneficiaries of an innovative social experiment. No more food stamps, food-kitchen dinners or sporadic shelter stays. The 13 would get a drastic bailout, financed by taxpayers. Each would receive 3,000 pounds (about $4,500), in cash, with no strings attached. The men were free to decide what to spend it on.

The only question they had to answer: What do you think is good for you?

“I didn’t have enormous expectations,” an aid worker recalled a year later. Yet the homeless men’s desires turned out to be quite modest. A phone, a passport, a dictionary — each participant had ideas about what would be best for him. None of the men wasted his money on alcohol, drugs or gambling. A year later, 11 of the 13 had roofs over their heads. (Some went to hostels; others to shelters.) They enrolled in classes, learned how to cook, got treatment for drug abuse and made plans for the future. After decades of authorities’ fruitless pushing, pulling, fines and persecution, 11 vagrants moved off the streets.

The cost? About 50,000 pounds, including the wages of the aid workers.

[Rodamala]

What passes for "science" these days provides a full explanation for why we are suffering...

...a bevy of totalitarian shit.

Thanks for rationally explaining my exact same thoughts.

[Engedi]

We already provide free education to the poor (and most of the Liberal colleges have now dumb down them so that a D is passing).

They get childcare funds if going to school

They get low income housing

They good food stamps

They Medicaid Health care and Prescriptions

They get rehab and drug help, Methadone treatments

Perhaps we should give them a lifetime one lump sum- abuse it and you are done.

Hmmmm...I can just see how that would work....

[Two Kids' Dad]

I like your idea.

[Gay State Conservative]

The men were free to decide what to spend it on.

[tbw2]

We already have a lot of programs. If existing money isn’t enough, nothing will be.

And we’d end up with a large proportion blowing their free money, demanding more free food, housing and services. Many people are poor because of bad choices that they keep making (popping out kids they cannot support, gambling, drugs, alcohol addiction, enabling criminal offspring).

Then we would have people getting the free money and still needing a plethora of additional services, simply upping the total bill.

[Jack Hammer]

“The 13 would get a drastic bailout, financed by taxpayers.”

So... the money isn’t free.

Why is it that every time the government hands out cash, it’s considered “free” when, in reality, it’s confiscated from those who work for it?

[Cincinnatus.45-70]

“Give money to the poor, and it all ends up back in the hands of the rich within a matter of days.

“That’s why the Bolsheviks understood that the only solution was to simply shoot the rich.”

Let’s try it another way this time. Let’s take all the people on extended unemployment compensation and other welfare programs, and put them and their families into permanent work camps after 2 years on welfare.

Why just give money to people who can’t take care of themselves? They obviously need more help than that, and we are being inhumane by not giving them that help. Why are we so uncaring as to just give them money?

A life sentence for them and their children, to clean and polish the new solar power arrays in the California deserts will give them the dignity of work and help our renewable energy program at the same time.

And for a double benefit, almost no one else will ever again apply for welfare!