If a person is drowning, do you reach out to help them, or teach them to swim? The answer is obvious of course, help them. But will that prevent them from drowning in the future?
This is the constant dilemma charities face: should they help the recipient alleviate their current condition, or should they coach them so circumstances don’t repeat themselves? Different charities have taken different stances. Salvation Army focuses on donating clothes and other necessities to the poor. That, however, keeps them dependent on the support of wealthy donors. Kiva, or the other hand, focuses on lending money to the poor to fund a business, anything from knitting hats to starting schools. This charity does help people rise above their impoverished conditions.
This dichotomy relates to a quote in one of my favorite books, The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. “Treat the disease, not the symptoms.” Poverty is merely a symptom; treating it will not prevent the recipient from getting poor again. The systematic problems that produce poverty — a depressed economy, drug wars, a lack of education, etc. — are the diseases. Curing these will truly help eradicate world poverty.
However, you cannot have one without the other. It is impossible to teach someone to earn money if they do not have shelter over their head. Similarly, one cannot hope to teach an impoverished member of a drug cartel how to earn a living before giving him/her the money and support to leave the cartel. It is important to treat the symptoms to the point where one can survive. Then, treat the disease.
In 2012, the US government spent $18 billion on border security and immigration enforcement. If even a fraction of that money were used to stimulate the economies in the immigrants’ countries of origin, they wouldn’t need to sneak into the US in the first place.
There is a fine line, between treating the disease and treating the symptom. At some point, treating the symptoms will no longer be helpful, and one must move on to discovering and solving the root cause of the problem. If a person is drowning, of course you must save them. But THEN, once they are safe, you must teach them to swim.
Amal,
I really like this post! I especially like the shape of the post (yes, yes, I’m an English prof and how one writes, not just what one says is crucial): that you begin with a very simple premise/dilemma and then deepen and complicate it by applying it to very pertinent and provocative situations. Really nice! I’d just add one thing to your thoughtful third paragraph where you speak of the “systematic problems that produce poverty,” amplify or augment, as it were, the “etc” in the examples you provide. One of the “systematic” forces in a unequal society (such as capitalist societies are) is the need to have low-paid workers. SOMEBODY has to do the “dirty work.” We have all sort of stories to justify the divisions — the clerk has no education, doesn’t work as hard as the bank teller, much less the manager — but ultimately, the disparities are there and required. What’s been shocking is how, in just the last 25 years in the US economy, the gap between the lowest paid and the highest paid worker in any company has become a yawning one. Numerous economists have written of this period as the return of the Gilded Era in the US economy when a few people become fabulously wealthy to the detriment of the bulk of the population. (Remember The Great Gatsby? The novel was written in response to the gaps that were ripping apart American society, though Fitzgerald focuses more on the social costs of such rapid wealth-acquisition). Anyway, just wanted to share some thoughts on this marvelous piece which clearly has gotten me thinking too.
That is so true! I guess when I considered charity I only considered people from other countries, which was quite narrow-minded of me. I didn’t consider the many people within the US itself that are impoverished as a result of 1) the overly saturated job market, and 2) as you mentioned, the need to have low-paid workers.
In fact, including the poor within the US adds a totally different perspective to the article. For example, when you see a homeless person, should you give them money or buy them food? Most people would say buy them food, because money can be spent on anything, while food would ensure that they eat. However, food is only curing the symptom, while money (if properly spent) could cure the disease — their homelessness/unemployment. Yet giving them money is like telling them to learn how to swim, and then hoping that they will have the means to do so. Again, perhaps the best, although perhaps impractical and time-consuming, solution would be to buy them food (rescue them) and then give them the resources needed to get a job (teach them how to swim,) thereby letting them lift themselves out of poverty.