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[...] Once the cash transfers started, parents had enough money to pay school fees, and teachers had money to buy paper, pens, books, posters, paints and brushes, making the school more attractive to parents and children and raising the moral and, probably, the capacity of its teachers.

[...] Targeting also addresses yesterday's, not tomorrow's, poverty; it aims to help those who have fallen into poverty rather than those in danger of doing so. Yet the most effective way to reduce poverty is to prevent it, as preventing poverty costs less than helping people out of it.

Charity is based on the sentiment of 'pity' and, as the philosopher David Hume noted, pity is akin to contempt. Private charity as a central feature of social policy may satisfy libertarians, but it profoundly offends the central idea of republican freedom, that of non-domination. Being dependent o…

Although an NIT would be a useful anti-poverty device, it would do little to advance republican freedom or provide assured economic security, nor would it be a vehicle for social justice. It would not apply to people without jobs or with incomes too low to pay tax. [...]