When it comes to reforming health care in the United States, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey says the "best solution" is for Americans to eat better and change their lifestyle.
I used to listen to them a lot, but even before I self-identified as a socialist I could tell that something wasn't kosher about how they did their stories. They always took these really narrow looks at problems and used that limited amount of information to draw out these conclusions that were always just obviously incorrect if you took other factors into account.
The story that I remember is exactly like yours; they were wondering if just giving people money would actually improve their lives (as opposed to other more complicated methods of assistance), so they looked at some experiment that had been done in the 1800's and came to the conclusion that since 19th century farmers couldn't effectively make use of a direct cash stimulus it wouldn't work today, ignoring the fact that we live in an entirely different economy, society, and even geography. I remember listening that and just thinking to myself, "what the fuck are these guys talking about?"
There are a shitton of studies that show unconditional cash transfers work as well or better than conditional programs. Giving people money is good. It gets them to invest in businesses, education, etc.
I used to listen to them a lot, but even before I self-identified as a socialist I could tell that something wasn't kosher about how they did their stories. They always took these really narrow looks at problems and used that limited amount of information to draw out these conclusions that were always just obviously incorrect if you took other factors into account.
The story that I remember is exactly like yours; they were wondering if just giving people money would actually improve their lives (as opposed to other more complicated methods of assistance), so they looked at some experiment that had been done in the 1800's and came to the conclusion that since 19th century farmers couldn't effectively make use of a direct cash stimulus it wouldn't work today, ignoring the fact that we live in an entirely different economy, society, and even geography. I remember listening that and just thinking to myself, "what the fuck are these guys talking about?"
There are a shitton of studies that show unconditional cash transfers work as well or better than conditional programs. Giving people money is good. It gets them to invest in businesses, education, etc.