Planet Money #698

Planet Money #698: The Long Way Home

This episode focused on the subsidies the federal, state, and local governments give to poor people.  However, poor people usually have to enter a lottery, and you are lucky if you get the benefits.  It is a decent program and raises some good points.

Yes, this is a tremendously inefficient way to distribute aid, but it is emblematic of the larger problem of how we "help" poor people with aid.  It's a patchwork of a million programs, some of which incentive work, some of which don't, and all of which take an army of people to administer.  There has got to be a better way to help the less fortunate.  I believe the answer does not lie in government, but rather in civil institutions - churches, charitable organizations, etc.  As Dale Renlund said at the last general conference:

“The greater the distance between the giver and the receiver, the more the receiver develops a sense of entitlement.”

 When the federal government comes up with these well-intentioned but usually misguided programs, it makes everyone worse off.