# How America treats the poor

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-america-treats-the-poor/668598>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [September 11, 2013, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-america-treats-the-poor/668598 "2013-09-11T20:10:52Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 11

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**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\
**Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-america-treats-the-poor/668598/11 "2013-09-11T21:48:04Z")

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> [@ITR\_champion](#):
>
> [ul]  
> [li]The federal government operates 126 anti-poverty programs, 72 of which provide cash or benefits directly to poor individuals and families.[/li][/ul]

This is the problem. How do you expect a homeless person to keep track of, apply for, and receive the benefits of 126 programs that they may or may not be eligible for?

Take the current entitlement expenditure, divvy it up into cash payments to every single citizen, no questions asked. Preferably weekly or bi-weekly. If that’s not enough for a person to eat and obtain a bare minimum of shelter (healthcare is a separate issue, but everyone should be able to obtain that, too) in the parts of the country where the cost of living is lowest, tax the rich a few dollars more until it _is_ enough.

That way, the democrats win because they get to protect the poor from ruin, the republicans win because they get to eliminate bureaucracy while the lazy stay poor and the hard-working still have incentives to produce value. We all win because there are fewer beggars and criminals. Also, you know you can still scrape by even if your business fails, your job gets outsourced, your degree turns out to be worthless, or you get injured.

Of course that eliminates wage slavery, huge wasteful armies of bureaucrats, cuts down on the “crime” boogeyman, mentions the word “tax”, and generally makes too much sense all around. So the bullshit we have now will remain in place, for fear the other side might be seen as “winning”.

The problem isn’t that the government isn’t generous. It’s that they’re generous to the wrong people (big businesses, bureaucrats, and lobbyists). The current entitlement programs we have are gifts to _them_, not the poor.

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