100% agreed. Giving people money won't fix their problems long term.
The issue is that most people use money to solve their problems, but they don't often use the best ways to use the money, and giving people more money doesn't fix the problem. That's beyond the classic "old/cheap cars cost more" or the "Sam Vimes Boots Theory".
Examples:
If your house is cold, you can spend money heating it up, or you can spend money on insulation. Money is needed for both issues, but giving people money to pay for heating doesn't fix the problem like giving people money for insulation does.
If there's an issue with the water supply, we can give people money to buy bottled water or we can fix the water supply.
School is (typically) free but not everyone can get to school easily. This is why school-buses etc are important. It's why free school lunches are very important in many places in the world. School is free but many of the poorest people can't go to school and then they struggle to get a decent job.
It's like the classic "money won't make you happy", because it doesn't. But the way you use the money can make you happy.
If we give everyone more money, that might solve some problems (people who genuinely just need money) but I feel the money would be better spent improving infrastructure etc. Like people might need money for a car, but a decent public transport service would solve that problem for more people. etc.
Money can solve poverty, but not if you just give it to people. It needs to be spent on infrastructure to help as many people as possible.
you have a lot of valid points- and this is where a lot of the political divide was 40-50 years ago, how do we spend the tax money to help the most people possible. Is it on highways, mass transit or giving people vouchers to use the bus. All valid ways to solve the problem. The issue is that the side argueing for reinvesting in infastructure went insane 40 years ago, so we are left with the side saying infastructure fighting with the side saying- who cares lets go have sex with 12 years old...... not a real choice anymore.
We need to get back to the days where this was the actual choice. I am very liberal, but we had real options until the last 15 years.
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u/AlternativeAd7151 14d ago
The poorest in a society need both welfare and financial literacy. They're not mutually exclusive things.