I wonder if part of the success of this program in a little out of the way village comes from just that: it is out of the way and therefore not exposed to the petty criminals, drug dealers and bullies that would have gone in and taken over the project for their own use.
The lesson: to help the poor first of all you have to get rid of the heartless thugs that pray on them.
9
As a Peace Corps Volunteer in Lesotho I observed that when a women earned a little money she would spend it on her family -- purchasing food, paying school fees, or providing improved housing. Men, on the other hand, would spend their money on alcohol or their girlfriends. In travels elsewhere in the world I've learned that, sadly, this is not uncommon. Ever since I've contributed to Trickle-Up precisely because of its emphasis on helping women to start small businesses. Time and time again these women have not only bettered their lives but also the lives of the children.
31
Isn’t that the classical story of teaching to fish instead of giving a fish?
6
@Pascal Bruyere
A Kristof writes:
"“It’s not just training them to do something technical,” he said. “It’s teaching them something more profound — self-confidence.”"
That's were the new and added value comes from, compared to previous programs.
Teaching a skill is already what is being done all around the world (except, of course, in the US, where a pragmatic, result-based approach of poverty is time and again replaced by an insult-based approach combined with cutting off all financial aid, by the GOP, even though study after study has proven this to be entirely counterproductive).
12
I would think that one gains self confidence once their skills allow them to earn a decent living.
Skills that don’t earn money, I.e. nobody will pay for them, surely help self esteem but it only goes so far.
Do you think the article says that first people should gain confidence (how?) and then skills and money will flow?
I will read again because I’ll admit that I read through it pretty quickly.
2
@Pascal Bruyere
As the quote shows, you have to SIMULTANEOUSLY teach a new skill, provide the money/material required to put it into practice, AND teach self-confidence.
That's in comparison to providing financial aid and education, all while insulting them, humiliating them, and blaming them for being poor - for instance by asking a urine sample before you accept to provide financial aid, which means suggesting that if they are poor, they must be drug addicts, not normal people, etc.
6
What are the differences between this program and others such as ACCION and others that provide loans so that people can earn a living? Can they learn from each other? It appears that management of personal resources and instilling pride in accomplishment are a major part of this program. Perhaps programs such as Doctors, Dentists, and Engineers Without Borders, IRC and others could do some counseling along with bandages, sutures, fillings, wells, food, and shelter.
3
“Before, we often went hungry,” Gómez said. “And we’d be lucky to eat meat once or twice a month. Now we have food, my children have school uniforms and we eat meat every couple of days.”
Now, they could be further enriched if we were to free them from the burden of associating meat with well-being. While it might be a measure of individual economic well-being, it does not scale to the common good. Sadly, there is no example of this in wealthy nations.
4
@brian lindberg
Leave your bubble once in a while, there's a whole world out there. These people could barely afford to feed themselves, they can't afford to take the time and money to try to balance all of their nutritional needs without eating meat. There's a reason why, even in the US, veganism is associated with the elite. Choosing not to eat meat is a privilege a hundred steps above the ability to afford meat.
21
Thanks for mentioning this. It bothered me as well. Meat and livestock gifts overall aren't the best for the poor for many reasons. Instead, teach them how to garden and grow food and raw resources for handicrafts, and teach them how to enrich their peasant diet of plants, grains and legumes, and to stick with their low meat diet, which is what all the rich nations are now eating.
6
America will start seeing significant and positive changes in the lives of its own poor once it stops punishing them for being poor in the first place.
23
Nice piece! You forgot to mention Heifer Intl. Their approach is extremely effective. Please, everyone interested, go on their website and read their stories. Great group!
12
So much depends on the culture in which the poor are embedded, it is impossible to generalize.
In the family I married into, they came from Mexico in the late 1950’s as penniless, legal, migrant fieldworkers. They lived several families together in the labor camp and scrimped and pooled their wages, moving up through hard work and dependability eventually to pack house jobs and driving the tractors. As the families gained financial independence, they moved into rentals, and then to home ownership, by this time, pooling the older children’s wages also. I married child number five of seven, all of whom work and are successful. Several of their grandchildren have college degrees. At no time did any of them take public assistance, but every family member was expected to help out. Now that the matriarch is aged and infirm, the adult children have an intricate schedule of shared 24/7 care. No one is overly rich. No one is utterly poor. No one depends on the government.
13
@Laurie Maldonado
Uh ... how can you simultaneously claim that:
- "it is impossible to generalize", and
- "No one is overly rich. No one is utterly poor. No one depends on the government"
?
And both statements have actually been proven false over and over again.
As to the first statement: yes, in the 1950s upward social mobility was real, so migrant workers could earn a living and improve their situation, if they worked hard.
Many times in US history, that has not been the case though, and in many countries around the world, it's not the case either.
Apart from that, it's clearly countries where taxpayers accept to pay about 50% of income tax that perform best, when it comes to overall health, education, and unemployment rate.
So of course you can prefer to live in a place without a real government, or can prefer to pay no taxes at all. It's just that in that case the "greatness" of the country as a whole goes down dramatically, so why would anybody want to do that?
6
@Ana Luisa
It's you who are confused. Laurie simply said with justifiable pride that her three generation family who arrived here penniless succeeded without having to resort to welfare.
Somehow you find this worthy achievement insulting. Presumably because you believe a costly government is required for "greatness" whatever that means.
My guess is you have no clue how wealth is created nor understand that governments consume wealth.
And with the US government hopelessly unable to live within its means, I hope you are not holding it up an exemplar of fiscal management
3
Building self-esteem is certainly critical to facilitate people's moving out of poverty. I know, I did it. Unfortunately. initiatives like the graduation approach will be extremely difficult to implement in the US. First, the dominant class has successfully propagandized poverty as the domain of the lazy, worthless, and inferior. They are only useful as cheap labor in menial jobs--when needed. Second, the propaganda further dictates that channeling resources to the poor is nothing more than stealing from people with jobs via transfer payments. Better to give the money to the rich,'a 'la trickle down economics. It's unlikely a place where the poor are mostly despised will ever meaningfully assist them in moving beyond poverty.
18
Sounds like what VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) used to do in the US, and Peace Corps, overseas. Do these two USG programs still exist?
2
Wow. Applying this benignly anecdotal, small-scale experiment to "nations" is . . . cruel optimism, ridiculous.
2
@IsabelJ
You really believe that insulting poor people will somehow motivate them more to start believing in themselves again, rather than doing what this program does, namely actively investing in increasing self-confidence and self-respect ... ?
If yes: time to update your info about emotional intelligence ... ;-)
7
"The Ugly American 2.0."*
*[Sixties best-seller in which a straight-talking American businessman comes to a rural village in Vietnam or Cambodia and gives the poor villagers HOPE by showing them stuff they were apparently too stupid to think up for themselves.]
Didn't work out so well the first time, did it?
1
This sounds a lot like the Comilla Project in Bangladesh (then East Bengal) that I learned about in 1964 from Sol Tax in a course at the University of Chicago. It was a successful idea then I am glad it is continuing to be successful.
3
Wow, judging from the comments us Americans REALLY hate the idea that any of us would ever want or need any help. Or, maybe it's just that a lot of us deeply resent the idea of any money going to anyone but ourselves.
9
@Nick
Both are probably true, but the most interesting and least debated hypothesis is the first one: yes, people tend to be very afraid of having to admit their own vulnerability, and often the only way that allows you to look the other side, is precisely to deny the fact that we all are vulnerable in the first place.
In that way, you can start imagining that if you aren't poor, it's not due to outer (and always unreliable, especially in the US) circumstances, but only to something inside you and that will never disappear.
It's because so many middle class people living outside of big cities (= where poverty is too visibly present each and every day to still be able to successfully activate this kind of coping strategies) are afraid of losing their home/health/job and never learned how to deal with this fear, that they vitally need to cultivate myths like these.
As to your first hypothesis: I think it's a direct consequence of the second.
Create an economic system with very high levels of insecurity, and people will accept no matter what job, just to have a paycheck at the end of the month - including many jobs that do NOT boost your self-confidence (because of the content of the job, labor conditions, managers with low EQ and low leadership qualities etc.).
That's the context in which a human being starts to hate the idea that others would not have to accept such inhumane situations and still get money - THEIR hard-earned taxpayer money, moreover...
4
Kristof is delivering a very similar message to the one that Brooks offered a few days ago, and it is being received with similar scorn (it's always worse with Brooks because of knee-jerk hatred of conservatives). The response from the NYT's readership is once again that the solution is to keep doing what we've always done, but with higher taxes (on people richer than whoever is writing). The lack of imagination is why the public finds the political left so unattractive. There's too many on the left who haven't had a new idea since 1968. Ted Kennedy's dead; it's time to move on. The question is whether the American political left can adopt any new ideas before most of the boomers die. Don't give me Bernie or AOC, both are peddling recycled 1960s socialism; that time has passed.
6
As if the right is brimming over with new ideas...The right perpetuates its own fantasies regarding poverty, blame and social responsibility. I have a new idea you might hate more than tax and spend: it's called "Take no more than you need." This novel idea has the potential to spare us the false charity of the not-so-benevolent giver who's really just a mirror image of the rapacious taker gorged to surfeit.
4
@Tom Meadowcroft, so what are you peddling instead---more tax cuts for the uber-wealthy and big corporations? Sounds like the statistics on the growing gap in income and wealth distribution in this country and throughout the world haven't provided much of a wake-up call for you.
2
The old saying:
Give a man a fish and he eats for a day.
Teach a man to fish and he eats for a life time.
4
I like the fact that some men have stopped beating their wives, but it's still depressing that men will only stop beating women if they are making money.
16
There is an organization that already specializes in giving a cow or goat or sheep or other livestock - especially bees! This is Heifer. They also educate and mentor AND also give information regarding general healthcare and FAMILY PLANNING. www.Heifer.org
6
Family planning is in ALL CAPS because...no society in the world may willingly opt for a more modest existence in early adulthood, in exchange for more palatable alternatives to warehousing at life's close?
1
Suffice it to say the same applies here. About 12 years ago we started including in our lives a black high school student who was a Blood and had lived on the streets. Black friends told us that we would end up disappointed. Well, at 12 a blood, at 21 a college student body president, at 28 a middle school principal, married with children.
We treated him like we treated our own kids and he responded just like they did. What he needed was self confidence. He has that.
16
It may go deeper than self confidence. Sounds to me like the latter is itself a response - the first spark being the steps you took to effectively communicate that you value him as a person. Great job!
7
Baskets and meat buns seem pretty feeble to me.
I would do what's already being done all over Asia and Eastern Europe.
Teach poor people -- some of them living in caves -- to hack into foreign bank accounts.
7
Self-confidence comes from respect and encouragement that lead to accomplishment. Each small accomplishment leads to greater accomplishment and thereby more self-confidence and respect from others as well as oneself.
It's very empowering.
3
What I gathered from reading the article was that the women gained dignity through learning a skill and having the funding necessary to start their own business with that skill. The men are "afraid to hit the women" because the women are their meal ticket.
While making baskets, purses and meat buns works in countries like Paraguay, it certainly does not work in the USA. I would love to know what does.
1
@Lynn Taylor
You left out the essential thing that this article shows the program added to those purely material things: hope.
And you create hope not by telling people to be hopeful, or by "training them to do something technical", but by "teaching them something more profound - self-confidence".
THAT is the key lesson here.
It's also the very opposite of what Republicans tend to propose, when they agree to invest in financial aid or help to get access to healthcare or education, as the GOP frames this kind of aid as being an "entitlement", in other words something that you actually do NOT deserve, as your poverty, in their eyes, is mainly your own fault. That's also why they add humiliating things such as urine tests before becoming eligible for Medicaid, and in the end, this kind of mentality logically leads them to want to cut off all aid altogether, to only pass bills that help the wealthiest, as for them only when you were highly successful in accumulating material wealth do you deserve to get government laws that actively increase your wealth even more.
What the Graduation Approach to material aid shows is that if you actively use tools that have already been proven to increase self-esteem, rather than undermining it, then you don't just make poor people dependent on financial government aid, you also give them a real, effective path out of poverty and dependence altogether.
So instead of calling them "welfare queens", we better start to take them seriously...
4
Until conservatives can be persuaded poverty is not a choice, there will continue to be a lot of it in the wealthiest nation on the planet. And the idea of rewarding someone for bad choices, as can be construed as happening in the Graduation Approach, is anathema to conservatives. As for changing their mindset concerning poverty, good luck with that. The poor don't make campaign contributions.
5
The comments section adds much texture to Mr. Kristof's piece. I see many drawing a distinction between solutions that work in other places (one described them as "simple economies") but not in the US.
Poverty is not having enough to live on, whether it's a thousands of dollars housing voucher in Boston, or a cow in Paraguay. Spending, to paraphrase a Dickens character, a nickel more than you have. And the threshold shifts as living standards generally rise.
What I worry about is that the public dollars devoted to the poor are so often spent inefficiently, and occasionally (but too often) fraudulently.
Also, we don't take a holistic approach to solving poverty. Just like hospitals now assign patients a hospitalist to manage their care, we need to change the way we attempt to solve poverty. We can't just throw money at it. Case managers are supposed to function this way, but they don't. They can't.
I worry that the longer we do not approach this problem a different (better) way, the more poverty becomes a mindset that makes it hard, very hard, to change.
3
@Eve Waterhouse
"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness; Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."
4
It is confusing to read a story like this in the same paper that a day earlier had an article about "research" suggesting that first-class cabins on airplanes amplify the problem of people in coach class fighting with each other or otherwise behaving terribly.
Maybe if everyone read the whole paper the world would be a better place.
4
These ideas for poverty intervention certainly aren't new. I remember reading similar studies from the 90s and the idea was old even then. The example that jumps to mind is giving goats to single mothers in Tanzania. The idea was goats are 1) a source of stored value, 2) a source of ongoing income, and 3) a benefit to household consumption. Primarily milk and sometimes fabric. Some NGO, I don't remember which one, carried out the program with relative success.
The Graduation Approach takes a bit more of a holistic "lean-in" attitude towards the idea but were talking about the same basic principle. Once you've resolved a crisis intervention, make aid a productive and self-perpetuating investment.
Great theory but not always great in practice. Things get complicated quick. The relatively successful goat program I mentioned. Well, that apparently stirred up a whole heap of gender and cultural issues within the local area. Women in rural Tanzania aren't traditionally supposed to own property. At least not something as lavish, and predominately associated with male gender roles, as a goat. Needless to say, there were more than a few tense moments.
Best laid plans...
1
@Andy
All change creates some tension. That's not a reason to avoid it.
2
Thank you and thanks to the Times for publishing some of the very best articles - the ones that make a big difference!
I have 6 children and most mornings I send one or two of your articles to all of them. Several of them are involved in jobs that help many lives, but this one gives that extra ingredient that so many programs need. Thank you!!
7
Social Security penalizes poor people who work by reducing their SSI benefits. For every dollar earned 50 cents is deducted from the Person's meager $840 monthly Benefits. This is a Fact and it is cruel. While Billionaires like Donald Trump aren't paying any taxes at all someone living on $840 a month is effectively taxed at a 50% rate on work income ! Not even Bernie Sanders talks about this grotesque attack on the Poor.
9
@todd
That is not a fact. That is a distortion of how income impact SS payments. $840 is an arbitrary benefit amount. The average is $1,461. Still not a lot but is meant to be a supplement and based on an individual's contribution while working.
Facts here.
https://www.ssa.gov/planners/retire/whileworking.html
@Daphne SSI = Supplemental Security Income which is different from Social Security retirement benefits. It's correct that work is penalized for SSi
6
@Daphne SSI is not SS. They are different
2
I’d consider contributing to this - but only if there’s a way to assure this isn’t Heifer International operating under another name. The “give a cow” pitch seemed sensible, until that organization turned my small contribution into an avalanche of direct mail solicitations (a net loss thanks to the cost) and peddled my name and address to every half-baked, scam charity operating at the time.
8
Nick Kristof is a smart guy. He doesn’t think the answer to US poverty is giving every poor person a cow or teaching them how to make sandwiches, or for that matter giving micro loans to people here. But his message is to shift focus from subsistence programs — which are still needed — alone to augment them with other things that provide a pathway out of poverty. He mentions two, early childhood programs and earned income tax credits. But I don’t think he would stop there, and from his other columns, I have the sense that he recognizes structural differences, like extreme income inequality and the insufficiency of minimum incomes here. Those are topics for a second (or third, fourth,...) column. For now, the central point is pathways out of poverty rather than mere survival in poverty.
14
Excellent - Just goes to show what can be done when people have the means to interact with the market. Micro-loan programs have been doing well also. The level of extreme poverty has plummeted in recent years to below 10%. Just last year we crossed the threshold of over 50% of the population living at a middle class or higher level.
As governments start respecting property rights people can finally believe that what they start can still be their own at the end.
In Hong Kong, it only takes a couple of hours and a couple of dollars to file the paperwork to start a business. In India, it can take years and cost a small fortune in bribes along with the government fees.
The move for states to charge sales tax on all sales made over the internet with it now being the responsiblity of the seller to collect and remit them is already having a chilling effect on small business. There are thousands of taxing districts, each with their own list of what is and isn't taxed and at what rate. No way for a small business to keep up with it.
I'm trying to sell out locally on Craigslist and then quit. It's just been too much. Too many regulations that it's just not possible to comply with and still keep prices low enough to sell things. A big company can afford the lawyers and accountants and spread the cost over a lot of sales. That's why big companies often welcome regulations. They keep competition out.
5
The Poverty Graduation Approach has been proven to help the extreme poor forge a path out of poverty, with long-lasting, sustainable results. It is cost-effective and is the long-term solution that can change the way humanitarian aid is perceived and delivered. Thank you for helping to shine a spotlight on this story of hope and success. Where we work in the arid lands of Africa it is having tremendous impact. Nick, thanks for all you do to call attention to how we can all end global poverty.
3
This column is oblivious to the truth. Hundreds of thousands of Americans help the poor
abroad while seeking to inspire them pretty much as Mr. Kristof suggests. But these countless servants to the poor get no mention here because they are Evangelical missionaries.
1
@michjas
You can never blame ONE op-ed about ONE topic for not mentioning everything onall topics ...
This op-ed isn't about WHO is providing help, it's about what KIND of aid works and what aid programs are less effective (regardless of who designs and implements them), remember?
As to your prejudice about the Times and the topic of Evangelicals, it was very easy to fact-check your hypothesis and then find all the evidence needed to prove you wrong ... .
Here's for instance the same op-ed author, Nicholas Kristof, writing about all the good done by Evangelical missionaries:
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/opinion/sunday/nicholas-kristof-a-little-respect-for-dr-foster.html
By the way, the same article also explains why liberals tend to have a negative image of Evangelicals - so your fear itself was not entirely baseless. It's just that it has nothing to do with the Times itself. Just google "nytimes evangelical missionaries" and you'll find many more interesting articles on this topic.
3
@michjas
1. This "help" comes with a price, listening to a religious pitch that can be insulting to those of another religion.
2. The column was not meant to be an exhaustive list of all those who try to help others.
1
Take out the “evangelical” and I’d reconsider. Their support of destructive Trump is simply unconscionable.
3
How could we not relate to this story of redemption, poor folks in a community being helped by a will to not only survive but thrive, an example we badly need worldwide, and certainly in Paraguay's neighbor, Bolivia, where we have Evo, a populist, more interested in perpetuating himself in power (in spite of his incompetence and corruption) than in helping the indigenous people get out of poverty and receive proper education to become self-sufficient...and able to think for themselves, hence, allow constructive criticism, for real changes to occur.
1
"Cash, Food and Health Care All Help the Poor, but Something’s Still Missing"
Education.
1
I will share your story. It is so beautiful. I can also tell that I work with small coffee producers from a country village in the region I was born. Though they were not poverty-stricken, now they are almost well-off! It was a kind of virtuous circle; some entrepreneurs, researchers, and they themselves became convinced that they could improve the quality of their coffee and earn more money. They also united to sell directly to larger markets and now they are exporting their coffee to the USA, Australia, and Japan. I am proud to be part of their effort.
7
The estimated US budget deficit for 2019 is about $1.1 trillion dollars.
Some of the social programs called for by some 2020 Presidential candidates (Medicare for All, school loan forgiveness, free college tuition for all, free everything for illegal immigrants, etc.) would add a few trillion dollars PER YEAR to the US budget deficit. Even socialist Bernie Sanders admits that there aren’t enough rich people to pay for Medicare for All, much less all the other freebies being suggested.
Peasants in Paraguay and other third-world countries can be given a start out of abject poverty with a cow or training or other assistance costing a few hundred dollars per person. Trying to lift US poor out of poverty would cost per person a huge multiple of what it would cost to boost peasants in Paraguay or elsewhere; the idea of scaling up what works in Paraguay to what might work in the US is naive.
Also, the article notes that in Paraguay the hope is generated after the cows and other forms of assistance are given, not vice-versa.
3
@Mon Ray
With respect to health care, we are already paying much more than extending Medicare would cost since Medicare has a clear fee schedule instead of a chaotic mishmash of contracted prices. You're already paying an inflated cost for health care. It's just that these costs are not taxes but take the form of ever increasing out of pocket payments and inflation (some years into the double digits) of insurance premiums paid by by employers which in turn tamps down wages.
8
@Mon Ray
Can you cite even a single suggestion of "free everything for illegal immigrants?" I don't know of a single Democratic candidate who is suggesting that. They are suggesting finally passing comprehensive immigration reform that will meet the needs of this country. By the way, no one is "illegal." They may enter the country without documentation, but that is a misdemeanor, not a serious legal offense.
4
@Barbara
What's even more, contrary to Trump and the GOP, the Democrats ar the only ones serious enough about national security and immigration reform to have actually pushed for a real, detailed, bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill, AND already got it through the Senate (and with a super-majority of 68 votes), thanks to Obama, in 2013.
Whereas all the four-star generals in Trump's cabinet have publicly confirmed that extending the current wall has been proven to NOT be the most effective way to increase border security, Obama's bipartisan bill is entirely fact-based, and does what border patrol agents have been asking for a very long time now:
- adding 40,000 new BP agents to the 18,000 already at the southern border (contrary to sending troops, as troops don't have the training nor the authority to solve existing problems there - and yet Trump merely sent some troops)
- installing e-verify and punishing employers who employ undocumented immigrants
- using drones to detect drugs going through official points of entry (= how 90% of the illegal drugs come in).
On top of that, Obama installed the FCM Program, which brought the number of non jailed illegal aliens caught at the border and who showed up in court from 60% to 99% - program that Trump nevertheless abandoned.
Since 2013, the GOP House has blocked a vote on the bipartisan bill, and Trump didn't sign anything into law either. He's also the only president to have stopped paying BP agents for a month..
2
I recently purchased Red Dirt road products and am impressed with the quality, the design, and with the reported impact on rural women’s lives from starting these initiatives.
Consumerism less empty.
5
If that village follows the global pattern, those people will eventually be displaced from their land and moved to a city where they can make baskets and empanadas, sell them, and give the money to their landlords.
Don't get me wrong; I'm glad those people are doing better. It's a good solution for some individuals but it won't scale until the concentration of the ownership of land is reversed.
11
I enjoyed reading this and hearing about some progress in Paraguay. I was there 20 years ago (Peace Corps) and looked at women's income generating strategies for an MS thesis. I'm not in the development field now, this seems like a great approach. People had so many ideas and skills, but just needed a little more support-financial and emotional-to make the extra step from selling something in the village to accessing a larger market. Paraguayans have a lot of potential, but the corruption and the 'system' discouraged people and wasted resources. I hope the corruption, etc. has diminished.
8
This story is synonymous to any person that lives way out in the suburbs, commutes long distances every day, works themselves to the bone (for the only job they can find) and then is paid not anywhere near recompense to the value of their work.
This is played out by tens of millions of people each and every day. Then, society, picks up the slack by paying social payments to these workers in the form of food stamps and every other method of subsidization for their lives.
Meanwhile the businesses that employ them get tax breaks.
We can talk about hope all we want. I am for hope, and I do hope that society will clue in and finally vote in representatives that will change fundamentally the system that propagates the above.
Until then, hope is far, far away.
15
Great idea. Teach a woman to fish, and her whole family eats.
Microlending helps with this, too. Kiva.org allows you to sit at your computer and loan as little as $25 to someone trying to make a small business successful. You can make a difference even if you don't have the time and energy to slog through muddy roads and rivers to visit the villages!
7
Nicholas Kristof writes about global issues that matter. And today's article about poverty alleviation is another example. Thank you. Importantly, Kristof highlights the sustainable approach to address poverty. That is helping people help themselves by creating a business which generates ongoing income. And he shares the importance of treating people with dignity and respect. There are many universal truths that transcend cultures, political boundaries, and geography; people want to be treated with respect, they want to improve their lives and opportunities for their children, and everyone wants to hope for a better future. Thank you Mr. Kristof for today's article.
8
The article clearly states "The Graduation Approach identifies the poorest people and gives them a cow or help starting a small business, plus coaching, a mechanism to save, and other support. Those who participate sometimes seem reborn. They gain income not only from their cow or business, but also because their mental health improves and they work harder on unrelated projects."
The point is that it takes a cow or help starting a small business to create hope and improved mental health; and in the US giving all the poor people the equivalent of the cost of a cow would add up to half a trillion dollars. (Plus, of course, the even greater costs of Medicare for All, free higher education, forgiveness of student loans, etc.)
Even avowed socialist Bernie Sanders admits we can't raise such sums solely by taxing rich people or corporations; the only answer will be higher taxes for all American taxpayers.
As Margaret Thatcher so aptly put it, "The problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people's money."
3
@Mon Ray
Except that the only thing that Thatcher achieved was stealing ordinary citizens' money and giving it to the wealthiest citizens and big corporations ... so apparently she's not exactly an expert on "socialism" ... ;-)
As to your "calculations": could you please explain how most wealthy, developed nations can increase taxes for taxpayers and then deliver a system where indeed education and healthcare are free AND of better quality than in the US, and how somehow Americans would be unable to achieve the same results too ... ?
Finally, let's suppose that your half a trillion dollars estimation would be correct: the GOP just increased the deficit by two trillions, only to give the wealthiest a big, permanent tax cut. Why would we give to the wealthiest what the middle class needs? And why, with an annual $21 trillion GDP, would using half a trillion to provide decent education and healthcare to US citizens somehow be a BAD rather than a good thing - let alone something that purely mathematically wouldn't be possible ... ?
Any concrete ideas of why Americans citizens should eternally remain secondary citizens, in comparison with the rest of the developed world ... ?
34
(2/2)
By the way, if you read Marx you'll see that "socialism" refers to a capitalist economy where it's the workers of a corporation who own the capital of that corporation, and as a consequence decided how to invest it and what part of it should go to which kind of salaries etc.
For decades already, there are NO Western politicians who support this idea.
Instead, all Western "socialists" are social-democrats. That means passing laws, within a capitalist economy, that make sure that no one gets extremely wealthy or extremely poor, and that everyone contributes to a collective fund, which then is used in such a way that all citizens have access to healthcare, education, AND a decent paycheck that allows them to pay about 50% income taxes.
Norway is the perfect example of such system.
What the GOP proposes is the exact opposite: take money from the poor and middle class (either through taxes, or through laws that make healthcare and education extremely expensive or even unaffordable, or that keep minimum wages extremely low all while allowing housing to become extremely expensive, etc.), and give it to the wealthiest.
THAT is what Thatcher did too, until indeed she started to run out of other people's money - the 99% of the people's money, that is.
Social-democrats reinvest that money in ALL citizens, rather than taking it from them and giving it away to the rich.
That being said, this op-ed is about not SHAMING the poor if you want financial aid to work, remember?
27
@Mon Ray
It is not just taxation. It is a livable minimum wage. It is caps on housing costs. It is regulation (oh, the horror!), it is restriction, and it is a determined Congress and Government that focuses upon Public Welfare first and foremost, and profit second.
It is "strongly suggesting" American companies to hire American workers and operate in the USA, and serving them up with massive taxation if they do not, regardless of where their HQ is. If the charter is American, then you operate in America.
It is rethinking the idea of "bigger is better" and realizing that in the long term, buying local is better for the local economy. National companies destroy small businesses (see Starbucks, Walmart, etc.), and only generate wealth for the owners and shareholders.
A radical rethinking of "capitalism" is what's necessary. It isn't socialism. It is sanity. It is putting the public first. It is taking care of Americans as a whole (society) before taking care of Americans as a class (the rich).
If we can't all be "rich" enough to pay for all the necessities - food, shelter, clothing, medical - and have a bit left over to have some fun (and fuel the local economy), then the system is wrong.
So, what we have is wrong, and it needs to change.
Don't fall into the semantics trap. Proper taxation is not "socialism" any more than free public K-12 education is "socialism".
10
In very poor indigenous countries the problem is money and knowledge: how to participate in a larger economy: note that baskets have to be sold in a town and empanadas have to be sold on a highway.
In the United States, the problem is not money, it is deep emotional scars: individuals, families, and whole counties have been trying to deal with long term emotional and social problems. In many towns the functional individuals from functional families have moved on to greener pastures. A solution exists: but it is not quick: Families and communities have to be rebuilt into nurturing safe places to grow up. First: family planning and birth control so women have control of their own bodies and lives. A single mom in a small town is simply dependent on government handouts which are a sandwich of money on the outside and shame on the inside. Small town schools and rural counties have to come to terms with the reality that individuals must have agency about their own bodies: junior high school should include serious science in human anatomy, physiology, and health and serious courses in family and personal economics and family planning. When women control their lives, a community begins to heal because she is able to provide a safe and nurturing environment for the children she chooses to have. Unsafe families and chaotic families damage their kids who then can't function. A woman is the bedrock of a family. Invest in her.
21
@memosyne Hope makes the difference. How you can give someone that hope is different person to person.
One spot of light among the darkness does not make me any more optimistic. All the rich owner overlords among the world are there to treat the un-empowered like slaves. And all our systems are evolved to support indentured servitude. Like as if 100 dollars makes one free. Money is not freedom. Knowledge is.
5
Enhancing, rather than tearing down, recipients' dignity and sense of self-worth. One of many reasons why a social insurance approach is better than a welfare approach to providing health care and income supports.
1
Fantastic column. The same problem has infected many rural and rust belt communities in America, which have become trapped in a downward spiral of despair. Investment alone is not sufficient; changing community norms around cynicism is at least as important. Though I would add that governmental dysfunction and corruption must be addressed before places and people can truly thrive.
7
I've witnessed firsthand how this can work in wealthy countries too.
One of my family members got mentally ill, years ago, and had to be hospitalized for 9 months.
When she came out of the hospital, she was financially broke, had to take tons of drugs three times a day, and her self-confidence was almost entirely gone (after all, how can you still trust yourself if you're broke and need so many chemical substances to protect your brain against itself ... ?).
She was living in France at the time, where they had programs similar to the one Kristof is describing here.
She got a disability allowance AND, once her health was stabilized, a subsidy to start a (very) small business. She also got a (free) coach specialized in this kind of situations, and who didn't merely provide her all the practical information and guidance needed to create a startup, but was also highly trained in emotional intelligence tools. So he made sure that he took rampant feelings of self-doubt and even self-hatred into account, patiently, and constantly approached her in a way that fully respected her dignity and deep inner goodness.
And it's that constant encouragement and trust that made her give it a try.
Five years later, and thanks to a government-funded two-month stay in a center that allows people to gradually and safely reduce their cocktail of psychotropes, she's still receiving a (smaller) disability allowance, BUT works half-time and is seriously considering going back to school again..
17
Indigenous people in poor countries often live off the land at a basic subsistence level, sometimes taking part in the monetary economy hardly at all (e.g., bartering grain or services for goods).
These people’s annual incomes are measured in HUNDREDS of dollars PER YEAR. For such people the gift of a cow or a bicycle or a sewing machine may bring not only hope but a step up and away from abject poverty.
In rich countries poor people receive TENS OF THOUSANDS of dollars in cash and social benefits PER YEAR. To give them the equivalent economic boost as described for Paraguay would require further payments of, say, 10 to 20 thousand dollars per year, which would more or less equal or exceed the existing US annual federal welfare budget.
I think looking to indigenous people in Paraguay for lessons on how to deal with poverty in the US and other rich countries is quite a stretch.
2
@Mon Ray you left out the element that Mr. KristofMay was highlighting for us to consider: Hope. We must end the stigmatization and degradation that we attach to assistance - at whatever financial level we support.
3
@Mon Ray
Imho you missed the point of this op-ed.
What it shows is that financial aid alone is NOT enough. If you help poor people materially (no matter what the poverty level in a specific country is), all while blaming them for being poor, you reinforce the very strong emotions of self-doubt and self-hatred that poverty creates (not in the least because the surrounding cultures blame them for being poor and see material aid as something that they actually don't deserve, some kind of luxury that non poor people don't receive etc.).
And it's those emotions of self-doubt and low self-confidence that make material aid only partially effective, whereas the same material (and by definition necessary) aid combined with a non blaming but supportive approach produces much better results, taking people out of poverty much faster and in a much more sustainable way.
So by definition suspecting them of being drug addicts and asking them to prove that they aren't before they can get Medicaid, for instance, might INCREASE the risk of addiction, joblessness etc., so is not the most effective way to reduce the unemployment rate, contrary to what certain right-wing politicians imagine.
As to your idea that a solid, material safety net would be something that all wealthy countries except for the wealthiest among them all (the US) could afford: that's quite absurd, no? What's the point of being the wealthiest country when we keep so many people artificially poor ... ?
4
@Ana Luisa
Pretty sure they purposefully misinterpreted the article so that they could rant about poor people and socialism.
1
The Earth's resources belong to everyone.
The idea that universal income was a right
began long ago, it's time it become reality.
5
These people have a skill to sell but need help exploiting it. Too often here our people need an exploitable skill. Providing that is a different sort of problem
4
Most capitalist societies today have a large reservoir of the poor, including the U.S. bottom 20%, but higher ratios in other countries like 40% in Greece. The persistence of such large numbers is a necessary to capitalism, Marx called this the lumpen proletariat. Until a country becomes a democratic socialist system where full employment and maximizing all people is the basis of the economy, none of these development schemes such as starting a small business for a few will work.
2
Anyone have any examples of a place in the universe that has full employment and the ability of all people is maximized to its fullest extent? I imagine such a place is also a leading world innovator constantly creating new industries and medical advances to improve the human condition. Sounds like a utopia, I will move there right away.
1
@Leo
So you gave up on the American dream - even though we've come closer to this ideal than ever before.
So why stop now? Especially when, as this op-ed shows, our tools to get people out of poverty are getting better and better?
Thanks to the Obama economy, we're almost having full employment today. Thanks to his strong investment in 21st technologies, the US remains one of the world's leading innovators.
The only way to regress now is to refuse to use those tools, and instead stop funding science and research and start passing bills that bring 19th century savage capitalism back, where the wealthiest get wealthier and the middle class and poor only poorer.
By definition, you can't "move to a utopia". You do can roll up your sleeves and work hard, as a society, to transform it into a reality, step by step. And frankly, I don't see any excuse for not doing so. Do you?
5
@Leo I am saying that poverty elimination efforts are doomed to failure because the system requires such poverty. We have full employment today in U.S. but 20% live in poverty, majority have no wealth whatsoever. Thank you capitalism. Democratic socialism is the ideal system to move to; it doesn't yet exist in our country but it can be done. Like Medicare for all.
3
I think one of the biggest impediments to resolving poverty in the US has to do with the wider community's perception of the poor. Attitudes form the background, the bath if you will, that those struggling are surrounded with daily. It seeps in and influences how you look at yourself, what you believe you can accomplish. Racism does play a part -- an even stronger negative of belief -- but there are also the more "benign" attitudes of the teacher that is clueless, the landlord who doesn't see you as a person, the policeman who correlates you as one of those most likely to. If we want to do away with poverty in this country, we need to change our attitudes about the poor.
5
In other words, instead of approaching poverty only on a material level, this UN program decided to take the full human being into account, which means that you HAVE to learn how to work with emotions too.
And as this program shows, it's really a two way street: first, the person DEVELOPING the program must have an emotional intelligence, EQ, that he has trained enough in order for him to know that emotions are crucial, and to know what the tools are that allow you to effectively deal with the emotions that go with extreme poverty. Only then can the second part (transforming those emotions in other people) succeed.
Having a low EQ means being largely unconscious of many of your own emotions at the moment that they are happening, needing fear and shame as basic tools to manage your own emotions (pushing difficult emotions out of your awareness by shaming and judging yourself), and often failing to accurately read other people's emotions.
As long as the people designing programs against poverty have a low EQ, those programs will remain much less effective (and sometimes even counterproductive, as this op-ed confirms) than when people with a highly trained EQ design them.
And of course, when a large chunk of the population has a low EQ, they will vote for politicians with a low EQ too, promising to solve all problems through inflicting pain or fear - as that's the only problem solving mechanism they've ever known.
6
There is no correlation between the situation of the poor in developing nations and the USA. It is the middle class, not "rich" but above the subsidy cut off, that face the most pressure here.
I just read in the Boston Globe that in my city the section eight housing voucher for a two bedroom will be increased from $1,900 to $3,200 a month. Because, hey, housing cost are high what do you know. That is $38,000 in take home pay right there. Add in $10k for subsidized day care, $1,000s for subsidized health insurance, plus SNAP, etc. and a negative Federal income tax rate thanks to the EITC and a working "poor" person eligible for all the available subsidies would need to move to a job that pays $60-$70 an hour to match what they receive. Where is the intensive there? A modest pay raise could lead to a massive pay cut. No, the people that are squeezed are those earning $30 to $50 an hour. Soon in the expensive cities there will only be the "poor" and "rich".
22
@Daphne
That doesn't mean that things would be different in "rich" countries, it simply means that there are many different causes of material poverty: in poor and developing countries it's often the absence of a strong, non corrupt central government, so that big corporations can easily exploit local people's resources and destroy their habitat and income.
In developed countries, it's mainly corruption creeping into democratically elected governments, which then start to replace laws and rules that leveled the playing field and allowed all hard-working citizens to have a decent paycheck at the end of the month, with new laws and rules, that allow the wealthiest citizens to plunge ordinary citizens more and more into poverty (replacement that those who adore doing so prefer to call "de-regulation" ... as if the new political rules of the game shouldn't be called rules anymore once they benefit the rich only, and should somehow be considered a purely "natural" way of doing business, rather than one that directly follows from a government's decision ...).
So the specific kind of laws that increase poverty may be different from country to country, but it's main cause is always the same: corruption at the highest level.
What this op-ed shows, however, is that once people have been plunged into poverty (no matter how), actively taking their emotions into account, including lower self-confidence, makes aid much more effective than if you don't - or even try to shame them...
6
@Daphne I’m sorry but that’s not how Section 8 vouchers (aka Housing Choice Vouchers) work. Voucher holders contribute to the rent (30% of their household income) and the issuer of the voucher, in this case USHUD, covers the balance. There are some details re how utility costs are factored in, but that’s essentially how it works. If a family has a voucher with a value of $3200, that’s for a home in a particular area with a particular number of bedrooms, which in turn is dictated by the number of dependents in that family. I’m guessing you’re referring to a voucher for a very large family, and/or you’re located in a very pricey area like Concord or Cambridge - north of Boston in the town of Chelsea, where I run an economic mobility program at a non-profit, vouchers are worth far less. In any case, as the family’s income changes, so does their rent contribution.
4
@Stefanie
$3,200 is for Charlestown. I was quoting from the article. I live in a less expensive neighborhood myself. Still very pricey.
Your last sentence emphasizes my point. If you are benefiting from public assistance programs earning more could well cost you, and those who are paying their own way face increasingly unaffordable costs. Subsidizing costs (housing, medical, education) for a few just helps keep them inflated.
3
The difficulty here--and not saying this approach doesn't work--is that there aren't ONLY "good people in crushing poverty." There are ALSO "bad people preying upon them." There will ALWAYS be bad people (or situations) preying upon the weak.
Even if the woman selling Empanadas is strong relative to her neighbors, she is weak compared to the local Strong Man who demands Protection for anyone who wants to run a business in "his Territory." She is weak compared to the multinational conglomerate which swings in to sell Empanadas for less than she can. She is weak compared to the government who decides that she should be shut down altogether. She is weak, even compared to the health problems which could strike her youngest child, be intractably expensive to pay for.
Small scale solutions CAN help on a small scale. BIG scale solutions are required on a BIG SCALE.
* Cut Corporate Welfare which flows to the top 1%
* Empower Unions & union membership
* Put the teeth back in collective bargaining and do away with Right to Work (ie Right to Get Fired laws)
* Install REAL Broadband Internet including Backbone in Rural America. This infrastructure is MISSION CRITICAL for rural Americans to join the 21st Century. Rural Americans pay FOUR TIMES as much for data, it is TEN TIMES slower than the city, WHEN they can get data AT ALL due to weather and location. They are shut out of the information economy, which more and more, controls what we see, hear, know, learn and do for a living.
26
Mr. Kristof, (and all fellow readers)
Please read Rutger Bregman's, Utopia For Realists. It will change your thinking about poverty, its causes, and how we can ameliorate it.
Mr. Kristof, I hope to read your next article about UBI as an antidote to the war on the poor.
3
How can the generational poor in the United States ever gain dignity if we are always telling them they are victims?
The people in remote villages in Paraguay are grateful for help to become self sufficient. Many in the U.S would be too.
But just as many feel they are entitled to compensation without ever having to do for themselves. They are invested in their victim hood and it’s big business politically and economically here.
3
This can only be the sentiment of someone who has never known or been exposed to real poverty in the USA. My mother grew up in a neighbor in Oakland where there were there were job prospects, violence comparable to war zones and no hope. Trust me, no one wants to be there and no one thinks they are getting over. Most would jump at the chance to have the resources to end the cycle and give a better life for their children. Meanwhile, since “entitlements” such as education are based on property values, the cycle continues.
16
@CNNNNC
What this article illustrates and many neurological studies about emotional intelligence have in the meanwhile proven, is that what you're proposing here, as interpretation of what causes poverty and keeps people poor, is inaccurate.
First of all, nobody falls into poverty deliberately, just like nobody wakes up in the morning hoping to have an entire day full of suffering. So yes, EVERY poor person by definition has sooner or later been a victim - victim of corrupt politicians, savage-capitalist CEOs, etc.
And yes, it IS true that once you're in that situation and you see no way out (most of the time because there is no way out), a human mind tends to start identifying with it. That's because our minds want certainty, so if you're miserable, then at least it helps to start identifying as a victim because in this way you don't keep blaming yourself (= a normal but irrational reaction, that only makes things worse), all while developing some acceptance of your situation (as resistance makes it worse too).
If this goes on and on, however, inevitably self-doubt will go up, and emotions of self-blame will become more frequent and intense.
Without the proper coaching, the normal reaction is to STRENGTHEN your identification as victim, in order to reduce some of the stress again.
With proper coaching, however, you give people financial aid and a job AND all the EQ training tools needed to transition from victimhood as sole buffer against stress, to real self-esteem.
@SMS I watch immigrants from Bangladesh come into Bridgeport with nothing and succeed in schools where the vast majority qualify for free lunch far beyond the native population. Why is that?
In this country, we spend money.
Can be for welfare or prisons.
We don't work to change people's behavior.
That is much harder.
6
@Independent
You cannot force a change in someone's behavior unless they choose to change.
2
@skramsv
Agreed.
But did you see the results Kristof is talking about?
These things work.
But it takes work.
And all my Republican friends say people need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
Then when they have children, they move to the best school district they can afford.
Most people are average and will rise up to the level of their environment.
We can pay for these kinds of graduation programs and get people educated and working and paying taxes or we can pay for welfare and prison.
2
I recently got back from a "person-to-person" exchange in Cuba's countryside. Although the level of deep poverty is apparently not on the level of Paraguay, the sense of hopelessness is evident in the ordinary people of Cuba as well. The hopelessness of people in Cuba is fostered in large part by the Cuban government itself, which remains proudly dictatorial, oppressive and defiant.
Mr. Kristof might in the future shift his focus from the wife beaters to the beaters of entire populations through dictatorial regimes like those of Castro/Diaz-Canal, Maduro, Ortega, and more.
5
@Dave Oedel
Kristof would be serving humanity better if he were to focus on what is going on in his own backyard. The Southside of Chicago is statistically more violent than Honduras or Guatemala yet Kristof only writes about the dangers in Central America.
Offering real opportunities and sowing the seeds of hope will allow many to rise out of poverty. It is also been proven that if you give kids a stable home with enough food, they do better in school and life. The ROI on a $5000 increase in family assistance assistance was $1 of aid returned $4 in economic benefits and that same dollar saved $7 in law enforcement and incarceration costs. High school graduation went from under 60% to more than 90%.
Face reality, the war on poverty is failing and it is by design. Politicians need a poor suffering underclass.
7
@skramsv
"Kristof would be serving humanity better if he were to focus on what is going on in his own backyard."
Wow. Just wow. So no one from the US can help anyone outside of the US as we helping US citizens does the best for humanity. What a narrow-minded view.
“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul... yet never in extremity it asked a crumb of me.” I love this Emily Dickinson poem yet realize as I get older that hope can need food to thrive. Thank you for this essay.
9
Welfare as practiced here is to do the bare minimum to keep people alive and from robbing and or rioting. Maybe.
This way we can say we *try*.
It serves to stop the patient from bleeding out, but does nothing to stop further harms from happening, and cycling all over again.
Investments (money, training, housing, health, and then a job 'n transportation) time, empathy and luck are needed.
Reads like raising a kid. Because it is.
As that great green philosopher once said, “Do. Or do not. There is no try.”
11
I recently moved from inner city Baltimore to AZ, and lived there long enough to understand the folks there..and to see dead bodies 50 feet from my door. The problem that I saw, is most of these folks were perfectly contented with the status quo. It was an exciting scene, drugs, guns, never having to work, sitting on your steps all day listening to music, watching your unmarried kids multi children (and getting paid mucho), and combined with all this, it was still a close knit community.
There were not interested in the kind of self esteem Mr. Kristof is writing about.
13
@fly,
This is known as 'Happiness in Despair' where you witnessed the flight of Hope from The Cuckoo's Nest, and Mr. Kristof is writing to tell us that we can do better. His childhood friend was expected to succeed, but injured in work at an early age, he tried to alleviate the pain by the use of drugs and died alone in an empty nest.
Your testimony is a reminder that there are Americans, regardless of party affiliation, who care about those with less, and are not planning to turn our country into a wasteland for the misbegotten.
1
Something's still missing? Birth control. Severe overpopulation is what's driving the mass migrations from Central America and elsewhere. Birth control offers real hope for women.
49
@datnoyd - you're incorrect. People are either fleeing for their lives because of violence, or migrating as a last resort because they can no longer feed their families. The root causes migrations are 1) Cartel violence (murders, kidnappings, rapes, forced recruitment into gangs), 2) Government corruption and policy/armed forces complicity with #1, 3) Socio-political-economic instability, driven in large part by US foreign policy in recent decades and continuing through the present, 4) Women fleeing severe domestic violence, often linked to cartel violence, and 5) effect of climate change in diminishing food production beyond a family's needs for basic sustenance.
30
@nopajoju Generally, you are right. But you and Datnoid do not have to be in contradiction because research has shown that when women are liberated and poverty relieved, they use birth control, resist their husbands and bring down the birth rates. Datnoid does make a serious mistake when he or she says that overpopulation drives migration. This is only partially true and too abstract. Rural debt and cartel violence are much more important. But again, they are closely related.
20
@datnoyd
datnoyd is correct. The number of people in Honduras, for example, is now 6 times what it was one lifetime ago(70 years), having gone from about 1.5 million in 1950 to over 9.5 million now. To ignore or omit the absolute number of people needing housing, jobs, health care, etc. is disingenuous at best and propaganda at worst.
9
Cash, Food and Health Care All Help the Poor, but Something’s Still Missing...
A brand new car!
(Sorry, it's big car giveaway week on The Price is Right. Drew Carey can work a crowd better than Bob Barker ever did. Nicholas Kristof take note: up your hype game!)
4
May 29th 2019 8:38 PM:
“That’s a lesson that the United States can usefully absorb from rural Paraguay. Esther Duflo, an M.I.T. economist who has studied the Graduation Approach, notes that American programs for the poor are often stigmatizing and manage to rob people of self-esteem, not boost it.”
No, such programs are set up to stigmatize the poor in the USA. That’s what “apply for” and “fraud prevention” mean.
These are particular choices of Reagan and the likes of Clinton and Gingrich.
(To a large extent unemployment, which has an even more limited term that Clinton’s “reformed” welfare, isn’t stigmatized, but you sure can’t apply for it if you’ve been fired, you can if laid off.)
Not a surprise that Kristof omits this kind of information.
Another thing that helps people avoid poverty: Not destroying their well off country, but that’s something Kristof supported in the case of Libya. (He also apparently supports massive US sanctions on Venezuela.)
I thought Kristof had learnt his lesson regards lecturing people about welfare when his close friend from highschool died of perfectly preventable health problems and poverty. I guess not.
Then I don’t see Kristof saying that big companies using welfare in the USA (Walmart, Koch Industries, Amazon, various big real estate companies, & military contractors) need to “graduate” from such programs. (Nope, haven’t forgotten the big investment banks that simply got cash hand outs.)
Submitted May 29th 8:51 PM eastern
14
@Yaj
Hear here! About corporate welfare!
People fuss fuss FUSS about food stamps, but NO ONE fusses about the cost of Corporate Welfare which costs the average taxpayer a taxpayer $4000/year vs about $40 yr for food stamps.
We don't need LESS in the way of Social Programs. Or even more efficient ones. We need to SPEND MORE ON THEM.
We need LESS in the way of big giveaways to big corporations. Corporate profits are at an all time high. We give away BILLIONS to corporations. They are doing JUST FINE.
8
Dejah:
If you can stomach digging through them, find the Kristof column on his highschool buddy who died young because decent paying blue collar jobs had disappeared outside of Portland Oregon, and of course there was nothing like good social programs for him.
And not only did Kristof support the destruction of Libya, he supported the Iraq war, so that’s more not caring about people. Prior to the invasion his only concern was that it would be expensive. Ironically look at which parties made the big dollars for not rebuilding Iraq.
Submitted May 30 9:48 AM eastern
Nicholas it as we have always known and has been stated! Teach a man(women included) to fish and you give him an occupation that will feed him for a lifetime. Both of our political parties miss the boat by a far margin when it comes to helping people. The left believe money is the answer(not at all) and the right does not want to give even the smallest of help to people(wrong, very wrong). This is why we in America must reject the extreme right and left and govern from the middle to help people up, and not use them as the parties have been doing.
5
@RJM
Hmm...here I thought the *middle* had been in control all along?! Is our current state not their doing?!
When did the extreme *left* ever hold the reins of power here in America?!
You point fingers, yet miss your own 3 pointing at yourself.
And again; whom is using the people?!
1
Affordable housing is America's greatest need. It allows
people to hang on and build lives.
17
Yes, absolutely. We must send social workers to the ruined cities of the rust belt and the desperate hills of Appalachia to teach the indigent to weave baskets. Because poverty is, after all, merely a state of mind.
21
@Robert M,
Try to explain to a six-year old child that hunger is only a state of mind. We have 'The Weavers', as described by David Brooks. Mr. Rubin brought to our attention the importance of social services earlier this week essential to redress our country.
Ensuring safe drinking water for all in America is not a socialist ploy, nor is clean air, in order to safeguard one's health.
There are 'Red Zones' throughout the world, and we now have one in our homeland, where humanitarian aid workers are being arrested for helping 'illegals', by leaving supplies of water in their path. Scott Warren, Arizona-based, is being sentenced for being a warrior, while the security patrol officers are kicking plastic containers of water aside.
Rise America, and we can help by looking into our own community while branching out to others. A task force to be sent to our poorest and vulnerable with life essentials, while not expecting to be thanked for its efforts.
There are rich among us, after all, depressed, and impoverished in spirit.
2
@Robert M
Where there's a will there's a way. And I see a couple of presidential candidates with the will.
1
It sounds like you're turning your back on socialism. Make Paraguay Good again.
4
@leaningleft nope socialism is not the answer.
Your dispatch comes from the village of El Estribo ('stirrup' in Español). 'Un estribo' is often a metaphor for 'a step up' or 'a helping hand.' Providing education and family planning (along with economic independence) to girls and women has long been seen as one of the most effective paths out of poverty.
15
I think that without doubt knowledge is the essential element here. Not injecting people with data! No, I mean letting people know their rights and what actions they have to make those rights come true. Also knowledge that they have their own ethos, that their community recognizes them from among the bulk or mass as Ortega y Gasset would put it. As a teacher and an avid learner, I think that if you are able to affect the emotions of your learner, all barriers to learning come down immediately. As Saint Thomas would say: Voluntas, without good will you wouldn´t even wake up in the morning and smell the coffee! And Roberto Riveros (me) always adds: Detox your kids from tablets and smart phones. Kids are the smart ones, not the gadgets!
3
I think we need something much more tangible than providing poverty programs that raise hope. I think U.S. workers work plenty hard. They need to be paid enough so that they don't need poverty programs like EITC. Employers need to be held accountable for not complying with labor wage laws. Employers should not be allowed to classify people as contractors (and pay them much less) when they are clearly employees. And I don't want to hear about certain group of people doing the work that no one wants to do - pay them enough and more people will want to do that kind of work. And corporations - stop whining about increased labor cost - you'll just have to pay your executives a little less.
73
We need to teach skills, period. Very simple.
Due to our terrible American diet: fast food, burgers, fried food, soda, energy drinks galore, chips, pizza, etc., which has spread across the world like wildfire, many parts of the world are becoming increasingly obese. Over 40%(!) of Americans are already obese, and obesity is only increasing. https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html
What is the end result of obesity? Type II diabetes and kidney failure. There is going to be a dramatic and severe and ever rising need for dialysis machines around the world in coming decades with the aging and ever more obese populations.
The problem: many, many less developed nations lack technicians and technical knowledge to even repair a dialysis machine.
Some non-profits donate used medical equipment (MRI, dialysis machine, etc.,) to under-developed countries, but don't teach them how to fix the equipment (as very few people in wealthy countries even know how to fix it). The result: the medical equipment is often not used and trashed by under-developed countries, and thousands die.
One of the greatest gifts one can give to another is a valuable skill and teaching entrepreneurship; owning one's own business means owning one's own destiny.
If we could teach less developed countries to repair dialysis machines, even to manufacture dialysis machines, poverty would be eliminated in many less developed countries (being a little facetious, but only a little given obesity rates).
5
Again Mr. Kristof is very helpful in pointing out the limitations of our just distributing some food, needed though as this might be. There are now a number of organization which have started, with another name, programs with the same understanding of the psychological blocking brought by human despair when faced with extreme poverty. It would be helpful if we made the names of many of them better known to encourage donors to give their preferences to this kind of action.
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"If the United States wants to tackle poverty more effectively, it should restructure programs so that they bolster dignity." Of course this is true, but in the United States, we have a growing portion of already working families living without dignity and hope. So it's not just getting a job, but re-incarnating competition so that workers once again can receive their fair share of the economic pie.
Whenever a monopoly raises prices, the owners increase their earnings at the expense of worker purchasing power. In fact, a case can be made that, because we have eliminated competition, we are no longer a capitalist society. We are learning the hard way that capitalism and democracy are synergistic, but the Achilles heal of both is competition. Take away competition and our way of life and human rights are gravely threatened.
We faced up to loss of dignity due to monopolies and cartels twice before, at the turn to the 20th century and the end of the roaring 1920's. Recently, Joseph Stiglitz stated that between 75-90% of all purchases are now made from a few large corporations. It is imperative that we elect a third Roosevelt to put the monopoly demon back in the bottle before our noble Democratic experiment becomes history.
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This approach sounds like a worthwhile investment. If we can get it done with a minimum of waste and graft, it could become a cornerstone of a new Marshall Plan.
Pope John Paul II, during one of his visits to Latin America decades ago, asked the question, "why are you so poor?" Is the answer corruption? Are Protestant countries in better shape because they are less corrupt? Do their citizens lead more fulfilling and prosperous lives because of their integrity?
I was hoping that moving the papacy around Europe would lead to a new dawn. But, Benedict resigned. Because of "corruption".
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@caveman007
Benedict was corrupt. There was a reason they called him Pope Rat. He overlooked a corruption scandal in the Vatican Bank and ignored it. He was more interested in rooting out those evil religious liberals over there, who weren't doing anyone any harm. So the dogs fell on Pope Rat and tore him apart... politically speaking, of course.
We DO need a New Marshall Plan, not just for Latin America. Julian Castro is correct that if we had a Marshall Plan for Latin America, perhaps its miserable millions would not be fleeing here in droves.
However, we ALSO need one for the US!
These programs give people hope and dignity but this is the direct result of improving their financial circumstances. The Graduation Approach is very similar to many other micro-loan and investment projects in other countries that give people the means to improve their circumstances - a cow, a sewing machine, a bicycle - and help them generate income. I am concerned that the jingoistic tone of this piece - all they need is hope!-misses the point that being able to make a living is a basic human need. This is the foundation for hope, self-esteem and dignity.
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@rosy It is also one thing to give hope a sewing machine at a time, but quite another to give hope when rising above poverty means you need 10,000 cows to compete with agribusiness, or you need two years of solid training to get an entry level computer tech job. Micro loans are simple solutions for simple economies.
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It's true. There is very little for a poor person in trouble in America to visualize.
If you are homeless, for example, in the tenderloin of an expensive city, you don't need just one leg up, one stroke of good fortune, you need three or four. You need to be clean and strong enough to hold three jobs over at least half a year to save up enough rent and deposits to get a share in a house with someone.
To save this while living the dream on the streets.
What do we tell someone who hits the streets after being incarcerated 8 years, friendless, with $50 in their pocket, immediately under the stress of homelessness, surrounded by the mentally ill, and the addicted, always eligible to be part of a police round up for some nuisance law?
A job at a fast food restaurant isn't going to make the difference.
Maybe four will, if four people will hire an ex con.
There aren't any good examples for people in these positions. All the possibilities are kind of hideous and people bomb out under the stress of it. Its like they live the degradations and desperations of the Gold Rush, but there is not even a myth of gold to hope for.
We subject the homeless poor to massive punishment and degradation.
More than anything they need the opposite. Rest, medical care, counseling.
We don't even provide public bathrooms to the homeless, they must even beg and sneak in order to relieve themselves.
What good does anyone expect from that?
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@Eric I have seen SF's Tenderloin while attending nearby conferences, and the contrasts are stark, as you say. Back in Macon, the contrasts are not as stark, but we still have the homeless who need rest and care. One answer that Macon has offered is Daybreak. SF might try more outreach like Daybreak. https://us.depaulcharity.org/depaul-home/our-work/programs/daybreak-center-macon-ga
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@Concerned Citizen
Me?
What is it about social media which prompts someone to assume a complete stranger's affluence, their class strata, or that they have property? Whatever the inspiration for such judgements, the resulting conjecture is not useful or interesting.
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@Dave Oedel
Sounds like a good program. Anywhere that provides comfortable stability is helpful. I volunteered with a day shelter for homeless youth, called Art Sanctuary, it had a good ethos, essentially a big art studio, with lots of supplies and paper, coffee, pasty, and kids could come in out of the elements to make art. That sort of thing, doodling in comfort, playing with some paint, seemed to be helpful for some kids over time.
The biggest problem I see is severe mental illness, which is an obvious impediment to mobility. Instead of hospitals or treatment, we put mentally sick people on the street, or just as frequently, in jail. I do some helping one on one at my local shelter, and the people who make the effort to work with me are the exceptionally together ones, not one of them has good mental hygiene, even to the degree of being mannerly.
Both the project you mention and the ones Im involved with are tiny in the face of our poverty. Its very frustrating sometimes as a simple individual to realize that the help you offer might not be lasting, or more than a balm, or that you reach so few. But Im learning to be less ambitious and just face the work that rises up in front of me.
As a society, we absolutely need something bigger and bolder and more powerful than a handful of well meaning volunteers who have access to the charitable budget of a parish church. The government needs to do something, and to do it well.
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"American programs for the poor are often stigmatizing and manage to rob people of self-esteem, not boost it."
We support and maintain a message of victimhood in our country.
This great program supports more than just hope - it supports resilience, self-reliance, and a self motivated "gig economy" approach that doesn't rely on a centralized government handout/reparation payment or resentment and anger in order to maintain itself.
Congratulations! Let's send our Congress down there to observe and take notes and listen ( all of them) -- maybe it will help us all.
10
Well, if such programs were to start anywhere in the U.S., how about New Mexico. American babies are born into poverty in 27% of our families, in New Mexico it's 37% - probably primarily due to the stark poverty faced by Native Americans - this in the "richest" nation on Earth.
Or, another idea - raise the federal minimum wage. If it had kept up with CEO salaries/perks since the 1980s, it would be $33/hour today instead of $7.25
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There's a common thread running between these success stories: earning a decent living.
And the common thread running between all the stories of despair, particularly here in the United States: lack of jobs that pay a living wage (by U.S. standards).
We've had decades of promises of how the booming "trickle down economy" would provide lots of jobs, but most of those jobs were created off shore. The cycle of "booms and busts" that has run over the last forty years consistently passed over the working and middle class. As Wall St. indexes have exploded, and corporate profits soared, what have they done with all this wealth? Socked it away overseas in tax havens, or bought back stock, or given ridiculous bonuses to executives. What they have NOT done is to allow any of it to "trickle down" to the workers.
While welfare, Medicaid, and other safety net programs are needed, the biggest thing that can restore people as functioning members of society is providing them with a good paying, sustainable job. There is no good reason why the richest country in history cannot provide this except for greed. What works in the villages of Peru, will certainly work in America. We just need the will to do it.
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@Kingfish52 As some comedian said, "I have never seen anything positive trickle down!"
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Sorry. Paraguay, not Peru.
4
I am pretty sure that giving folks in Harlem or any other poor area of a big US city a cow or some basket-making material would not lift them out of poverty.
There is poverty, and then there is poverty. Folks who barely participate in a monetary economy might benefit from a cow, but in the US the poor are already light-years (or mega-bucks) ahead of the poor in third-world countries.
Building hope and dignity are worthy goals, but scaling up this project to work in the US will cost a large multiple of what it takes for poor folks in Paraguay and dozens of other poor countries.
Welfare recipients in the US receive many thousands of dollars per year; in Paraguay the poor measure their income in hundreds of dollars per year. The math—and dollars—make this a pipe dream.
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@Mon Ray But the US's economy is also many multiples greater than Paraguay's...
And I don't really understand the logic of the mathematical formula you're following. It's not clear to me that the cost of giving the urban US poor "hope" is a linear function of what it costs to do the same in Paraguay. You would need a different approach, to be sure, but what it ends up costing is hard to say.
And what a self-defeating attitude: it might cost too much, so let's not think about it. This is how progress dies.
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Mr. Kristof you often astonish me with your wonderful off-the-beaten-track reporting. For the most part people don't care about Paraguay or indigenous people. I spent a lot of time in the 90s visiting indigenous villages in Chiapas and I must say that I got way more than I gave. We are so accustomed to our neat towns, our condos and shopping and it has made us a narrow minded people.
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@Suzanne Wheat,
Thank you, and thanking Mr. Kristof as well. A Canadian friend just returned from a tour of South America and gave this reader 'At The Tomb of The Inflatable Pig' of travels through Paraguay, authored by John Gimlette, and thinking of Ester Duflo, a source of hope, while we support and protect our humanitarian workers world-wide.
3
Hope is so important. When I was going through a very bad time, people wanted to give me "resources"--food banks, shelters, free clinics. But I also needed someone to tell me that my circumstances were temporary, and that there was a reason for me to believe in myself and my ability to build a better life. I didn't get that, and while I did improve my situation, I think it took longer because I didn't have hope, just desperation.
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That's not the problem in America. The problem is that work often doesn't pay here, so a work ethic is pointless. We have millions of citizens who work hard every day. The problem is they don't get paid very well. We wouldn't need food stamps or welfare of any kind if all Americans were paid a livable wage, now would we?
The best poverty elimination program is a good salary, but American businesses don't want to pay American workers American wages. This is the single biggest cause of all of our social, political and economic problems.
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@Kosovo I'm of the mind that the "single biggest cause" of our problems is slavery, of the medical debt kind. It makes work pointless.
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@Kosovo
I would offer a slightly different thought: Our problem is that hard working people that make in the $50,000/yr range can no longer afford our cost of living.
I would offer that we should ,as a society, reduce our cost of living. For example, we have an approach or are convinced that everything should be individually owned or purchased -- could be an internet service subscription for example:, when a group/city /town/ neighborhood uses a mesh network that would eliminate monthly internet bills for instance. This is just one example of many. The goal, in my thinking, would be to have a greater percentage of the population move into being able to afford our cost of living these days. Ideally all-(not likely) More complicated to achieve than it appears, but a simple goal. If we all could cut $10,000 yr off of our cost of living how many of us would that help into the affordability range? Then lets just do it.
Healthcare, transportation, and technology costs can all be brought down -- but we have to have leadership that will bring us together to basically do this and, frankly, demand it from our government without tolerance for corporate professional interference, and preferably with their begrudging buy in even.
We seem to accept that we have to spend more money on things than we actually do. We don't. The key? -- thought leadership that is allowed to thrive through various distracting politics that get us nowhere. And a non-partisan leadership group to get us there.
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@Kosovo The data says you are correct.
This chart is the Social Security Wage Statistics for 2017, the summary of everyones’ W-2.
It tells the story of America today.
Some notes for 2017:
About 21% of wage earners made less than $10K .
About 50% of wage earners made less than $31K .
About 69% of wage earners made less than $50K .
About 9% of wage earners made more than $100K .
About 1% of wage earners made more than $250K .
About 136,000 wage earners made more than $1 million. That’s 5/100ths of one percent.
There were 1143 people who made more than $20 Million, the total income for this 1143 people was $47,708,000,000 ( almost $48 Billion ).
https://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/netcomp.cgi?year=2017
Got that? A full 50% of individuals make less than $31,500 which is about $15.75 per hour assuming 40 hours per week and 50 weeks per year.
26
Oh, my Lord! Programs to "help the poor"? What the poor need is not "hope", but money. PAY people for the work they do! I live in the South where most people I know work 2 and 3 jobs and are not "dirt poor", but certainly not doing well.
The US does not need to give someone a cow or help them make sandwiches to sell. We need to PAY people for the work they do. We need to rein in the rapacious overlords who really run the society.
Some people in the country are beginning to discuss reparations. Instead of handing out checks to people, the US should spend on education in the poorest areas, both urban and rural. Fix the dilapidated school buildings, pay teachers. Spend money on public transportation in places urban and suburban enough to support it, so that people can get to jobs. Fix the trains. I've been on a train in Canada and here. Yikes! What a difference. And I was in "business" class. People selling meat pies and handbags is not going to help the vast majority the poor and barely hanging on people in the US.
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@Elaine I think, at the end of the day, what you and Mr. Kristof are saying amounts to the same thing.
10
I worked for years in an Soros philanthropy and non-profit education, so I've seen a lot. I couldn't agree more with you - GIVE 'EM THE MONEY! Pay people for the work they do! Stop with the psychologizing and the liberal hand wringing, and the patronizing attitude that somehow the poor can't figure things out for themselves and make their lives work without Mr. Kristof's bright ideas from South America. It's quite simple -pay people so that the can pay rent and get the basics to not just live but thrive. And then get out of the way. Be patient enough to wait a generation or two for the attitudes as behavior shifts because of new found economic security. Giving people the money and resources they need to survive will help people change over time. And by the way, there are more poor white people than people of color! Implicit in Mr. Kristof's suggestions is that Black people of other people of color need his help to figure out their lives. How arrogant and tired!
I repeat - Give people -- all people- the MONEY they need for the work they do... then leave 'em alone.
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@WDJ
And maybe while they are at this dignity building, they could figure out how to keep men from beating their wives even if they don't start a business?
3