Paying the Poor

It seems somewhat impossible to write a blog about innovation and not acknowledge the passing of Steve Jobs. As the owner of an iPod, iPhone and iPad, I can truly attest to the life changing nature of his products. In fact, I am typing this blog on my iPad right now. This man was truly a visionary; making us unable to live without devices we never knew we needed. Whle I can't say his products were necessarily geared towards the bottom of the pyramid, his work should undoubtedly be considered social innovation. He really did change the world for the better. As he so famously said, "We're here to put a dent in the universe. Otherwise, why even be here?" In the readings for this week, I was most struck by the notion of paying the poor out if poverty. While the amount of money these families were receiving was pretty small, for them, it was extremely significant; in many cases doubling their family income. I cant say I like the idea of paying the poor to not be poor. People don't want handouts; they want jobs and opportunity. Being focused on education, I couldn't help but connect this to a trend a few years ago to pay students to learn. Even after being supported by Harvard, the initiative was seen as being a failure. Why? Because I don't think you can pay people to change behavior. The social innovation here would be to find a new method of teaching and learning that engages students and their teachers in their work. Likewise, in the case of paying folks out of poverty, the social innovation would be to develop long term solutions out of poverty, or to actually address the health issues folks have or to no longer make students pay for their school books. I don't see this work as innovative, but I can't ignore that it seems to be working. While possibly not the most empowering or long-term strategy, in the short-term, it does seem to be moving families out of poverty and that is definitely worth celebrating. So would it work in the US? Could this be a potential solution for welfare reform? Could this be a solution for the poorest amongst us who even still struggle meeting monthly bills with assistance? I don't think it'll work and I'm not even sure it's worth trying. Let's think of permanent strategies out of poverty and not those that continue to have people coming back for handouts.