Why don't we fight poverty by just giving people money? (with Paul Niehaus)

Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

Civic Ventures

Business, Government, News, Politics

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 29 August 2023

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We saw during the pandemic that giving people cash is good for individuals and the economy as a whole. It makes sense: When people have more money, they spend it in their communities and stimulate the local economy. So why don’t we give people money all the time? Our guest today started a charity that combats poverty by giving people cash, with no strings attached, to use how they wish. The results have been really encouraging. Paul Niehaus, co-founder of GiveDirectly, explains how his program works—and more importantly, why it works. Paul Niehaus is an economist at UCSD and an entrepreneur working to accelerate the end of extreme poverty. He is co-founder, former president, and current director at GiveDirectly, the leading international NGO specialized in digital cash transfers and consistently rated one of the most impactful ways to give. Twitter: @PaulFNiehaus GiveDirectly https://www.givedirectly.org Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com Twitter: @PitchforkEcon Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics Nick’s twitter: @NickHanauer

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're directly as a pipe, you put money in at one end and we make sure that it comes
0:05.4	out at the other end in the hands of somebody living in extreme poverty.
0:09.5	Say, an orthodox approach, you know, that money has to go someplace and mostly it goes
0:14.4	to buy goods and services from other people who are producing those goods and services
0:19.5	and who will now need more help to produce those goods and services and so in a way it
0:24.4	gets the flywheel of economic development right moving.
0:33.3	From the home offices of civic ventures in downtown Seattle, this is pitchfork economics
0:38.2	with Nick Hanauer, the best place to get the truth about who gets what and why.
0:49.2	I'm Nick Hanauer, founder of Civic Ventures.
0:52.3	I'm David Goldstein, senior fellow at Civic Ventures.
0:59.4	We've talked a lot about stock buybacks on this podcast, Nick and I have to tell you
1:05.0	you know when there's like when we're talking about like this big direct cash transfer
1:10.2	to people like you, I worry about the moral hazard about what you're going to do with
1:15.9	that money.
1:16.9	Exactly.
1:17.9	Yeah, it's true.
1:19.9	It's true.
1:20.9	Is it weird how nobody ever worries about that when rich people get a lot of money?
1:25.1	Nobody worries about how they're going to spend it and yet during the pandemic when we
1:30.4	did these direct cash transfers to people to provide, you know, tens of millions of people
1:36.4	who were thrown out of work to try to prevent them from losing their homes and from starving.
1:42.6	Oh, no, that's inflationary.
	...

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