What’s wrong with the U.S. welfare state?
Forbes contributor, John Goodman, argues for cash transfers as a solution to healthcare, hunger and homelessness in the United States, referencing a 2021 article published in The New York Times by Amy Finkelstein, co-scientific director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) North America.
Here are two surprising facts about welfare and poverty in the United States: (1) we are spending an enormous amount of money on people at the bottom of the income ladder and 2) all that spending does a very poor job of meeting human needs.
And here is a surprising opportunity: if we took all of the money we are currently spending on anti-poverty programmes and gave it in cash to poor families, there would be no problem of poverty in this country.
We might still have some homelessness – reflecting mental illness or drug abuse. But conventional poverty would be a thing of the past.