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Throwing Money at Poverty

Felix Salmon:

If those billionaires had simply been content with staying at their 2016 wealth, and had given their one-year gains to the world’s poorest people instead, then extreme poverty would have been eradicated.

Hell, they could have eradicated extreme poverty, at least in theory, by giving up just one seventh of their annual gains.

But Sports Illustrated describes what happens to (rich) pro athletes after their careers are over:

Within five years of retirement, an estimated 60% of former NBA players are broke.

Here’s The Guardian on what happened to the $13 billion received after the earthquake in Haiti:

It is very hard to achieve good outcomes when we cannot determine who received the money and how it was spent.

Haiti received an amount almost equal to its gross domestic product, but several hundred thousand people remain in tent camps set up in the aftermath of the quake.

Port-au-Prince still lacks good roads, electricity and safe drinking water.

The problems that characterise the delivery of development assistance to Haiti are not unique – tracking exercises in other countries would probably produce similar results.

Obviously money is one aspect of poverty, but perhaps not the most important.

The word “poverty” comes from “poor”. It implies that everything would be fine if you just had more money.

I used to know a man who had been a partner in a successful restaurant chain. He had opted out of managing it but continued to receive $30,000 per month as part owner.

He would do thinks like (and I want to be clear that I am not making this up) going to a semi truck dealership and buy a semi using sentences like “I want one of them with the long hoods.”

One day, the chain went bankrupt and the payments stopped coming. Within six months this man was essentially homeless and had nothing at all.

He was poor.

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