One of the more popular social myths making the rounds these days is “the poor” (defined however you wish) just need more money and they will be “poor” no more. It follows that “the rich” (defined as you want) have taken money from the poor (how can you take money from people who, by definition, have none??) so if money comes back to them everything will be rainbows and cotton candy.
MasterPo is here to say: NO!
Based on personal experience nothing can be further from the truth.
Over the last two years MasterPo and Mrs. MasterPo have ‘provided’ direct financial support to 4 separate “poor” families (and in one case, twice to the same family) in the aggregate of well into the 5-figure range. The reasons for providing the financial support are not relevant to this discussion other than to say it wasn’t because we had nothing better to do with the money nor out of any Savior complex.
The resulting benefits to these families?
Nothing!
Absolutely nothing changed in these people’s lives.
The amounts provided were more than enough to give these people a good head start for turning around their lives, getting out from under some of their debt and bad circumstances, even to re-locate to areas with better prospects for work and self-sufficiency. Definitely would have been the best chance they ever had (and are likely ever to have) to get back on a good path in life.
But no. They didn’t take it opportunity. They squandered the money on things like big screen TV’s, Xbox, dinners out, gambling and drinking, etc. And today they are just as poor and bad off as they were when MasterPo first met them. Nothing changed.
Thus proving that simply giving money to people doesn’t solve their problems. Only the persons themselves can solve it if they want to.
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