Bill Gates on poverty in the US

From the Wall Street Journal, 3/17/2014, excerpted from the March 17, 2014 issue of  Rolling Stone Magazine.

Notable and Quotable

Should the state be playing a greater role in helping people at the lowest end of the income scale?  Poverty today looks very different than poverty in the past.  The real thing you want to look at is consumption and and use that as a metric and say.  "Have you been worried about having enough to eat?  Do you have enough warmth, shelter?  Do you think of yourself as having a place to go?"  The poor are better off than they were before, even though they're still in the bottom group in terms of income.

The way we help the poor out today [is also a problem].  You have Section 8 housing, food programs, very complex medical programs.  It's all high-overhead, capricious, not well-designed.  It's ability to distinguish between somebody who has family that could take care of them versus someone who's really out on their own is not very good, either.  It's a totally gameable system - not everybody games it, but lots of people do.  

Why aren't the technocrats taking the poverty programs, looking at them as a whole, and then redesigning them?  Well, they are afraid that if they do, their funding is going to be cut back, so they defend the thing that is absolutely horrific.  Just look at how low-cost housing and the various forms, the wait lists, things like that.

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When people in (and out or) Lake Oswego talk about "affordable" housing (also known as "workforce housing" and "low-income" housing), they believe  government-supported housing for low-income individuals and families is a good thing.  Government cannot do anything cheaper than the private sector can - if they do, it's through the cloud of government-supported programs or foundations.  

For every dollar overspent on public (-supported) housing, more deserving people could be helped.  If one factored in the administrative costs of sending our tax dollars to Washington and getting them back for public housing, a $250k dwelling unit (local expenses) might cost $332k instead.  Madness.  

The local guy who ditched all financing from government programs, built housing for $70k per unit and rented them at a rate that covered costs of about $650 for a 2-bedroom unit in close-in Portland!  No one can defend government-subsidized housing (except in a few cases for some felons and mentally handicapped individuals).  The Central Planners who have, and may still be, promoting "affordable" (government) housing for Lake Oswego - if not by inclusionary zoning, then by targets for numbers of units in 5 years, 10 years, etc.   This is wrong.  There is ample proof that this forced construction of affordable housing it a tax to us all - more than programs that already provide housing in a much cheaper way like Section 8 vouchers.  

Get facts.  Figure out who are the people to gain.  

Then ASK QUESTIONS, and then ASK some more. 
Ask until you can't think of any to ask anymore.