I’m currently in the midst of throwing money at a problem - car’s brakes corroded after I didn’t drive for three months due to Reasons. I’m desperate to get back behind the wheel - a backlog of car-centric jobs has piled up.
I mean that’s how governments always solve problems.
Im surprised nobody here mentions time. I can do alot of things myself. Like all the things that you can imagine. But my time is limited and I’d rather spend it with my family. So solving something by just spending some money saves me time and several headaches.
My renter complained that her dishwasher was broken. Bought her a new dishwasher. Complaints stopped because dishwasher works.
-
fixing (thing) that you’ve been half assed fixing for ages
-
having the right tools for the job
-
Finding employees.
Throwing money at a problem works, when you are actually throwing money at the problem and not at a symptom.
For me currently, my car is a good example.
Problem: I need reliable transportation.
My car is almost old enough to vote here in the US and while it has been a reliable ride now things are starting to fail left and right. I could spend money replacing the parts that break as they break. Or I could simply replace the car.
My solution: Just replace the car. More expensive short term, but it’ll be cheaper and far less headache long term.
IMO that’s what the “throwing at” is meant to convey. The person doing the throwing is doing it at a distance and with low accuracy.
Sewer line always needed to be cleaned out, just replaced the whole line with a new pitch. Been great since then.
On a large scale, when has it not worked? All examples I can think of it not working tend to be things like a guy trying to fix a problem in his home, by himself, but has no idea how to do things and keeps spending money on better equipment and parts, but still has a problem because he has no ability to use any of them properly.
You put more money into roads, the roads get better.
You put more money into education, children get taught better.
You put more money into war machines, you get shit that can obliterate all the people in a city without destroying the infrastructure.
Corruption is probably the biggest thing that keeps it from working. Developed countries don’t have the slightest idea what corruption even is. We hear that word in the US and we think “oh dear, bribes!” But in many parts of the world the entire economy is basically spent on greasing every palm, high and low, to keep some regime in power. Whole generations of entire countries have basically gone up in smoke this way. It makes the army’s $400 hammer sound like an absolute bargain.
I’m of the mind that if corrupt people are misappropriating funds, then the money isn’t even reaching the problem it is being thrown at. Money could resolve the original problem, but money likely won’t resolve the new problem of corrupt people stealing the money.
You can impose that technicality if you want, but when corruption is perhaps the world’s top obstacle to funding solutions for things, I see little point except the joy of splitting hairs.
Education is a issue on which if fails repeatedly.
Flooding a school system with money does jack shit if that school is in a poor community where the students and parents don’t value education. There are tons of examples of districts with massive per pupil spending that get horrible result compared to schools with less spending per pupil. Or if the district is full of corruption.
poor community
So the problem is still poverty.
you don’t fix poverty by giving poor people money.
you fix it by providing them upward mobility.
UBI pilot programs give a lot of evidence to the contrary
No, they don’t.
Yes, there is empirical evidence that giving people money directly is effective, just denying it doesn’t refute that: https://ubiadvocates.org/9-successful-ubi-pilot-programs-that-will-change-your-views-on-free-money/
As for why that is, poverty is partly about mindset and decision making, but all of that is strongly influenced by the effects of being in a financially precarious situation and being around others who are. Just knowing that you aren’t at risk of your life falling apart because of relatively minor problems makes an enormous difference and allows people practically and psychologically to think beyond the short term and not get taken advantage of financially.
Ok great. So give them upward mobility. That’s going to cost money.
No it doesn’t. It requires work ethic and community that rewards it. Those things can’t be built with money.
One reason these polices fail is because clueless white rich people think you can just give people money and boom problem over. Poverty is a inter-generational series of behaviors, it takes generations to get out of. The biggest factor is not money, it’s behaviour.
I grew up in a community with poverty. Some people made it out, most didn’t. Money had nothing to do with it. I had friends who had more money than me who ended up in prison, and friends with less than me who also got out. And many who got out and came back and ended up back where they were. The difference was their attitude towards life, if they were living for the moment, or living for tomorrow.
And frankly as someone how go it out, the people who got left behind are intense bitter, nasty, and greedy towards you when you do. And they start yelling at you how ‘if only they had what you had’… because they just refuse to take responsibility for themselves. The entire culture is a lot of bitterness, resentment, and trying to get rich quick and/or blowing money you do have on pointless luxuries. It is not a healthy culture that values education and financial responsibility, and often if you do take that path, as I did, your friends/family just HATE you for not being like them, for not wanting to blow your paycheck on booze and drugs every weekend like they do.
NASA
It works when money can purchase what is actually needed in detail, and the people on the receiving end are competent.
Works at my work. Something broken? Throw money at someone and it’s either fixed or replaced.
They stopped throwing money so now when a fridge dies it’s just no fridge for a week.
Social services. The programs that show that they save money - like rehabilitation instead of prison, that saves 4 dollars for every dollar spent. We should be funding those, but they’re not run by private prison companies, so there’s no political will to spend the money.
Throw enough money and THE expert comes to fix the problem.
Like, my fridge is broken – so I hired the entire engineering research and development department at [company] to solve the issue.
I feel like Tesla and SpaceX are examples. An idiot with a lot of money at the helm that buys top talent and can afford constant failures until success comes through. Tesla is back on the way down now but was a success story for this for a while.
