You would hope that an impoverished person receiving a windfall of cash would use it wisely to help herself and her family.
Alas, we live in a fallen world, and — as the sad spectacle of lottery winners who almost immediately bankrupt themselves shows us — some folks can’t handle receiving a large sum of money at all once.
An almost archetypal real-life example of this phenomenon comes in the person of an impoverished D.C. mother, who, as described in a recent article in The Washington Post, received more than $10,000 in taxpayer’s money only to promptly blow most of it on frivolous luxuries.
Canethia Miller, a 27-year-old mother of three living in subsidized housing in Anacostia, was one of 132 women in similar situations selected to participate in the district’s “Strong Families, Strong Futures” pilot program.
Under the program, the “new and expecting low-income mothers” were offered “$10,800 over the course of a year — no strings attached — intended to assess how unconditional cash payments could improve their families’ outcomes and economic mobility,” the Post reported Feb. 1.
They could decide to accept this government money in monthly installments of $900 or as a lump sum.
Miller accepted it as a lump sum — and immediately spent $6,000 of the money on a trip to Miami for herself, her husband and her three sons.
“Some of it I just left alone,” she told the Post. “The other side is, I wanted to blow it. I wanted to have fun. [My kids] got to experience something I would never have been able to do if I didn’t have that money.”
The trip included five new outfits for each of her sons, steak dinners, a boat tour and a reality-show-style makeover — a $180 “glow-up,” according to the Post — for Miller herself, so she “didn’t have to look like a working, stressed mom,” in her words.
Now, the Post’s profile tried to make it seem as though blowing 60 percent of that money on clothes, makeovers and travel was a smart decision, allowing her children to experience museums and luxuries they never had access to and contributing to a significant part of their education.
D.C. sent $10,800 to dozens of new moms. Here’s how it changed their lives. https://t.co/vHS8bK2LNy
— Post Local (@postlocal) February 1, 2024
Likewise, Miller herself painted the program and the obscene amount of money she spent on one trip as a method of gaining confidence and learning financial literacy, saying she opened a savings account and aims to keep at least $50 in it at all times, and, to her credit, she spent the other $4,000 on bills and a used car.
“A lot of communities in my area don’t know the financial gain of credit, saving for your kids; that’s why we’re broke, that’s why we don’t have nothing to pass down or no house to give down,” she said. “I’m trying to get to the level where I’m passing something down that really matters, so I can be set and my kids can be set, and they don’t need to push so hard like I’m doing now.”
That’s a laudable goal — but is blowing most of the money you received from the government really the best way to teach that to your children?
Granted, Miller lives in poverty, renting a subsidized apartment for only $120 a month (though still needing help from the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families fund to cover that rent) and struggling to make her food stamps last an entire month.
However, seeing as she admitted she had no idea how to save money or make her money last before enrolling in this program, is giving people with no financial literacy a gigantic sum of money all at once really going to help them improve their lives?
Miller credited the program with giving her the confidence to take a free class in information technology that is set to give her a $30-per-hour remote job, but still, wouldn’t she be in a better place if she had portioned out that money wisely in the first place?
Was this program a total failure?
The thing is, the recipients were free to use the money however they wanted, and while some used it wisely, others blew it all at once on luxuries that wouldn’t benefit them in the long term.
The stated purpose of the program with to improve people’s lives, and for some, it fulfilled that admirable goal.
Overall, though, it seems to be more of a reshuffling of taxpayers’ money that could be better spent elsewhere.
