本文探讨了给经济困难者提供金钱援助的合理性。作者从鲁特格·布雷格曼的《现实乌托邦》一书中汲取观点，认为贫困并非完全由个人决策失误造成，而贫困状态可能导致更差的决策。文章挑战了“贫困是个人缺陷”的成见，并指出贫困与不良决策之间的因果关系可能被误解。

🤔假设检验：文章首先提出一个普遍观点，即贫困是因为个人做出了糟糕的决策。这种看法简化了贫困成因，并为人们忽视贫困现象提供了心理安慰。

💼贫困的循环：接着，文章指出贫困可能导致人们做出更差的经济决策，从而陷入恶性循环。例如，贫困可能导致教育中断，进而影响就业机会。

🌟反直觉的现实：文章强调，虽然不良决策可能导致贫困，但贫困本身也可能导致更差的决策。这种观点挑战了传统的因果关系认知。

📈经济援助的合理性：作者暗示，给予经济困难者金钱援助，可能有助于他们打破贫困的循环，从而做出更好的决策，改善生活状况。

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Published on July 15, 2024 11:40 PM GMT

A Case For Giving Money To Those Who Are Bad With Money

This is a short lesson, but one I return to again and again — a lesson I learned from Rutger Bregman in his book Utopia for Realists.

The Assumption

It’s easy to believe that poor people are poor because they make bad decisions.

Firstly, this assumption helps us make sense of why poverty exists, because we know from experience that bad decisions lead to bad outcomes. It gets us off the hook for living happily alongside poverty, after all, we are where we are in life because we have made better decisions than those who are not doing as well…

“Poverty is a personality defect.” — Margaret Thatcher

Secondly, we see evidence of poor people making bad decisions. We see homeless people being unproductive, we see poor teenagers dropping out of high school at a higher rate, and we see crime and anti-social behavior accruing in low socio-economic regions. However, as discussed in Saving Lives Reduces Over-Population, correlation isn’t causation, and sometimes a counter-intuitive cause is at play.

The (counter-intuitive) Reality

But, while bad decisions can lead to poverty, it turns out people in poverty might also make worse decisions because they are poor.

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