What I am saying is that the help, in the long run, seems to be nothing but harmful. > taking away the assistance without also changing the fundamentals of the

What I am saying is that the help, in the long run, seems to be nothing but harmful. > taking away the assistance without also changing the fundamentals of the game might not help. Exactly right. I didn't suggest it has to be taken out cold-turkey. That would be incredibly cruel. At this point it is probably a 25 to 50 year process. We have to figure out how to effectively get people out of these horrid places and circumstances. The assistance, then, has to be designed to achieve precisely that and nothing less. The proof is in the results. The fact that we have millions of people living under these circumstances is evidence enough that we are not helping. There are layers to this. As is always the case, education is likely a massive element of the problem. I can't suggest an entire solution, that would take a group of well-qualified people time and study to lay out a plan to bring populations under the grips of well-intentioned-yet-harmful government assistance out of the darkness they live. Everyone should have equivalent opportunities. When we claim to help, yet harm, we condemn entire segments of society to never have access to the opportunities everyone else might enjoy. This is cruel. Say stuff like this on HN and you get nothing less than merciless downvoting, mischaracterizations and personal attacks. Makes you wonder who these people are. Who actually thinks we are doing a good job with these segments of our society? It's Einstein's definition of insanity: Continue to do the same thing and expect different results.