Explore:  Problems with Government Help

Many people think government is the solution to poverty. This is just not true. History shows that countries with big governments grow slower and are less prosperous. Government aid and programs lock nations into old and stale ways of doing things. Governments may mean well, some do and some don’t, but even the best ones are not set up to develop economies; it is not their role or function. A government does not know how to develop a country, it knows about power and some know about corruption, but we need to think about how this works.

Where does a government get money? It either borrows it or taxes it from people. So it is using money that is not its own and then it spends that money on all sorts of things. Some of it is spent on people, mostly friends of politicians, and some of it on themselves with a car and a driver and guard and a car for the wife and a nice house and so on. This is not development and it is not helping the economy or the people, and it makes people want to be friends of the government to get in on this. But how does this create businesses and lift people out of poverty? It does not, indeed it does the opposite by taking money that would have been used by people to buy goods, start businesses, and educate kids and spends it on someone’s car and driver.


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