A direct answer - because if you donate and work with people near you, you have to deal with the people. It doesn't sound like much, but it's the whole linchpin - you have to face the reality and often realize that what you want to do simply can't be done for any number of reasons, and then you have to back up and try a different tactic.
If you ship your money across the globe you can sit back and be content that it's working well based on the glossy reports you get; you don't have to actually deal with the people as people; just as statistics.
I think too many people (especially here, but it's understandable) think poverty just is "barely making rent".
Oh, that's the rich poverty! There are so many layers below that where it ceases to be poverty and starts being something else entirely, an entire alternate system of bartering and deals and staying alive day to day.
So many economic indicators are perverse - economically it would often be better for a family to get divorced, split into two homes, and then pay each other child support. Heck, economically it would be advantageous to divorce your stay-at-home wife and turn around and hire her to take care of the kids. You could even pay her more and charge her for room and board! You could charge the kids! Financialize everything!
We need metrics that are actually tied to human happiness, not human suffering.
You jest, but that's what I suggested to protect my ex's mother twenty years ago. She was a stay at home mom raising four children after an early divorce without alimony or child care, then long term caretaker for her parents until their deaths in their 90s. She managed two households, worked her entire life, and has no retirement, no pension, no social security to show for it.
The money was being spent, but the system didn't account for who was spending it. When her parents died, they had just gotten out of bankruptcy from taking out a second mortgage to cover late life and end of life care costs. She was left destitute and houseless.
Now, her daughters are paying to care for their mother. Per the article, these expenses, perversely, are proof of a successful economy under the current measurements.
We also have the reality that "American charity" has done horrible things to poorer nations - shiploads of free American clothing has decimated African textile industries, boatloads of free American food has destroyed entire nation's ability to feed themselves.
The further away you are from the recipient the harder it is to see the second and third order effects. Local and small means they can be noticed, and things modified to change the outcomes.
Local is often the best way, especially if you don't have resources that would overwhelm them (donating $1 billion to a local food pantry would likely blow it up).
But get involved personally; attend meetings, talk to people in the community, get to know what is being done and by whom, and places where some money goes a long way will start to become clear. In my experience the all-volunteer places are often way underfunded and don't really know what they're doing beyond helping people; if you can help guide them it can be incredibly valuable.
100% do things locally. If there is a food bank in your area, support it heavily. That's the absolute base of the hierarchy of needs. For example, in that blog post, expand the immediate donations. Note $100k to Alameda Food Bank, where my partner Betsy regularly volunteers.
Part of this is causal - if you're on what used to be called "fixed income" (read: social security) you migrate to places where your costs are lower; which is often rural areas.
Another part is that they're looking at total income over county-levels, which means that one Bill Gates or Elon Musk in your county will wipe out millions of people receiving "transfer payments".
> In contrast, many metropolitan hubs, affluent suburbs and exurbs, and high-income, high-productivity farming and mining communities remain minimally reliant on transfer income to power their local economies.
This may or may not be true; depends on the money flow, rich cities can have large swaths of poor people.
As for a "does this person actually live in this area" criteria, I have a hard time seeing that single thing alone as "bureaucracy" -- it's quite common.
The EITC was inspired by advocacy for a Negative Income Tax (which is generally isomorphic to UBI funded by income taxes, despite coming from the opposite side of the political spectrum.) But the designers couldn't avoid giving in to all the same problems with means-tested welfare that both UBI and NIT seek to eliminate, except or the separate eligibility bureaucracy, which integrating it into the income tax system avoided.
Of course, a GMI also differs from a UBI/NIT because that term generally refers to means-tested welfare with a sharp (usually 1:1 but not >1:1, which sometimes happens with means-tested welfare programs in aggregate in some ranges) cliff at starting at $0 in outside income up to the level of the minimum guarantee, whereas UBI/NIT benefits have a (usually much) <1:1 clawback via the tax system.
Co-opting potentially effective political movements is how the people in control stay in control. Once you start noticing it, you see it time and time again.
If you ship your money across the globe you can sit back and be content that it's working well based on the glossy reports you get; you don't have to actually deal with the people as people; just as statistics.
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