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August 19, 2009
E-mail a friendYOUNG VOICES
Pay a Man to Fish
Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City, knows a thing or two about money. After all, he is one of the world's wealthiest men, with an estimated net worth of nearly $5 billion. Born to middle-class parents, Bloomberg climbed the corporate ladder in a stock trading company, and then used the proceeds to start his own media conglomerate of news, radio, television and publishing. In 2001, he succeeded Rudy Giuliani as mayor of NYC by funding much of his own campaign.
It suffices to say that Bloomberg knows very little about being poor. What he does know is that the government has failed the poor by promoting soup kitchens, sock drives and welfare, which provides only a temporary fix. Solving the problem, rather than patching it up, takes an economic, not a compassionate, approach. Using his own money and donations from the Rockefeller Foundation, the City will give cash incentives to families who do small things to make their quality of life better. For example, $50 will be awarded for getting a library card and $100 will be awarded for taking a child to the dentist.
The program is called Opportunity New York City, and it is the first conditional cash transfer program in the nation. According to Newsweek, it is modeled after a successful Mexican program that has proven to work so well that 20 nations around the globe adopted similar programs.
Hopefully the federal government will take a lesson from Bloomberg's innovative move. It is important for political leaders to be humble enough to recognize when programs are failing, and even more important for them to then try something new. As the title of this article suggests, “Give a man a fish, you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, you have fed him for a lifetime.” New York's addition: Pay a man to fish, he will actually fish.