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This is why physicists should never attempt social studies.

This being said, The Millionaire (TV series) aired on CBS from 1955 to 1960. It explored the ways that sudden and unexpected wealth changed life, for better or for worse.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Millionaire_(TV_series)

Money and drinking alcohol are both known as “neutral spirits” that can be good or bad depending on their use.

While poor people might *say* having more money would make them “happy”, doesn’t it all depend on how they *use* that money.

That is, many will use it on frivolous and even self destructive things. Some will use it on short term goals, medium term, or long term. Some will just save it and not use it at all.

If many people get money, other people will automatically become predators and see them as prey. This includes government, which often thinks of itself as the apex predator.

It is even a sad truism that there are no wide scale famines in the entire world outside of those *intentionally caused* by a local dictator who wants to starve a hated minority group. Even when outsiders offer to feed the starving and put pressure on the dictator, he will demand prohibitively high bribery to permit it. And even then he will try and sabotage it.

Then there is the “technology gap” of poor people. A village that earns income by making hand spinning-wheel pots is not helped by giving them electric spinning-wheels, since they have no electricity. However, *showing* them the next generation of their technology, foot spinning-wheels, is “understandable genius” to them and represents a boon to the local economy.

It takes much creativity to help this way. In India, where diesel trucks are common, someone provided them with air pressure powered adobe brick presses. Just add mud, straw, and some cheap water-proofing liquid to the press, apply air pressure to squeeze out most of the water, and set the brick out to dry for a short time.

And bingo, they get somewhat uniform waterproof adobe blocks in a fraction of the time, and can build a building with them in short order. Thus a single truck with air brakes can serve an entire region to provide upgraded housing.

It can work in other ways, as well. Many Indian wells are contaminated with lethal amounts of arsenic. But if you provide them with buckets with sand and iron powder, it takes out the arsenic and leaves them with clean water. All very cheap.

Exclusively female microbanks can change a regional economy by putting women in charge of the family purse, instead of men who drink up their wages and rent prostitutes.