If you’ve never been poor, you don’t know how soul-crushingly hard it is to always be struggling to make ends meet. The grinding challenge of not knowing how you are gonna pay for this bill or that fee takes a real toll.
But on top of that, our current poverty alleviation programs—things like food stamps, welfare payments, disability assistance—they all come with some real strings attached. We make people experiencing poverty jump through more hoops to get this measly assistance than people who haven’t experienced poverty can even fathom. And the dirty secret of all that busywork we set up for people struggling to make ends meet? Our poverty alleviation programs just aren’t working in the way they should.
A big part of why they don’t work is because the people who create and run programs and services…
