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Now that all of these perspectives have come together, the implications for how we think about poverty – and design programs for people impacted by it – are eno

Now that all of these perspectives have come together, the implications for how we think about poverty – and design programs for people impacted by it – are enormous. So you mean it might be a bad idea to endlessly complicate the tax code and setup massive, complex bureaucracies all in the name of helping the poor? There's a chance they might not have the cognitive bandwidth to traverse these boondoggles designed to help them? Simplicity will liberate as many or more people from poverty as generosity.

anigbrowl 13y ago
Most of the complications in the tax code are not in the name of helping the poor.
dragonwriter 13y ago
> So you mean it might be a bad idea to endlessly complicate the tax code and setup massive, complex bureaucracies all in the name of helping the poor? We don't do that in the name of helping the poor. We do that in the name of avoiding helping the undeserving (whether the undeserving poor or others undeserving of the help), and/or in the name of attempting to influence the behavior of the poor with "help" as an encouragement for them to accept the influence. Accepting those kind of bureaucratic structures with those kind of motivations is often a political compromise made with those otherwise unwilling to help the poor in order to get some help to the poor, but helping the poor isn't the motivation for those particular structures. Its not the people that want to help the poor that oppose simpler options like Basic Income.