Andrew Yang’s promise to give every American $1,000 per month if he were elected president is only a geeky gimmick. But if you’re curious about how more welfare just like that would end, the Washington Post has a mostly fantastic story explaining it all.

The paper last week reported on a Mississippi-based nonprofit that gave away $1,000 per month, no strings attached, to 20 low-income black single mothers living in public housing.

Initial results of the experiment were on display at a meeting held after one month of payments:

Some of the women talked about their gift-filled Christmases and sported new hairstyles. Some said they took a sick day for the first time. They began paying off overdue electricity bills and high-interest loans. Kira Johnson, a social worker, asked how much money the women had saved. “I blew all of it,” Gray recalled. “It only took a weekend.” Most of the women said the same thing. In a month, nearly all of the money had vanished.



“Then, they asked if we were going to hand them the next check,” Johnson said.

Wow, it’s almost as if people who are given a bunch of money without having earned it, and without any conditions attached to it, feel less of a sense of responsibility in how they use it.

The story went on to say that the women were largely clueless about saving money, using banks, and developing good credit. For that, they needed yet more “guidance and support,” Democrat terms for “more programs.”

After six months, the number of women in the group who were working hadn’t changed. Fifteen had been employed at the start and fifteen remained employed at the end. Of the ones who did have jobs, they “were not making much more money than the women who were not attached to the workforce.”

Poverty is a real problem and probably one that will never be solved — least of all by giving money away to people who are in it. The geeky $1,000-per-month gimmick was tried in Mississippi and this proves it.