“You get what you pay for,” was one of Milton Friedman’s dicta. You pay people to be poor, unemployed, and in single-mom households – that’s what you get. And in Baltimore’s inner city, we got it good and hard. In the 21217 zip code, there were almost no married couples – other than the few ‘pioneers’ like ourselves who were trying to restore the handsome old buildings. Almost no one had a real job. And almost no one had any real idea how the world worked. They thought everybody lived on government handouts; the rich just got more. It was obvious to us then that welfare programmes were a disaster for the people they were supposed to help. And now, here in the faraway Calchaqui Valley of Argentina, we find ourselves with a welfare programme of our own. Three women have already asked for new houses. Two families have asked for running water. And today, we took a group of 10 people crowded into and onto our pickup truck – old, young, children, mothers – into town (a 3-hour drive). Three children got sick on the windy, rocky road – each threw up in the truck. Why were they going into town? So they could register for... welfare programmes!
