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Danielle Batist is an experienced freelance journalist, founder of Journopreneur and co-founder of the Constructive Journalism Project. She lived and worked all around the globe and covered global and local stories of poverty, exclusion and injustice. Increasingly, she moved beyond ‘problem-reporting’ to include stories about the solutions she found. She witnessed the birth of the new nation of South Sudan and interviewed the Dalai Lama. She reported for Al Jazeera, BBC and the Guardian and regularly advises independent media organisations on innovation and sustainability. She loves bringing stories to the world and finding the appropriate platforms to do so. The transformation of traditional media fascinates rather than scares her. While both the medium and the message are changing, she believes the need for good storytelling remains.
Why Do The Poor Make Such Poor Decisions?
With the original title of this story being so controversial, I didn’t want to change it for this piq. I was intrigued to read the story as I value the source, Dutch independent media platform The Correspondent, which occasionally translates stories to English. In a previous piq I highlighted another piece by this author, Rutger Bregman, on basic income.
This piece too asks big questions, and satisfyingly offers some insights—though not all the answers.
“From Australia to England and from Sweden to the United States there is an entrenched notion that poverty is something people have to overcome on their own," Bregman writes. "Sure, the government can nudge them in the right direction with incentives—with policies promoting awareness, with penalties, and, above all, with education. In fact, if there’s a perceived 'silver bullet' in the fight against poverty, it’s a high school diploma (or even better, a college degree).
But is that all there is to it?
What if the poor aren’t actually able to help themselves? What if all the incentives, all the information and education are like water off a duck’s back? And what if all those well-meant nudges only make the situation worse?”
