Why the rich should not pay for the poor

by 09woodpa (student)

Patrick Wood Mr Gavin history home learning Speech on why Rich should not pay for the Poor

"If you give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day but if you teach a man to fish, he will eat forever"

I believe the rich should not give money to the poor. I would suggest that maybe the rich could help the poor in other ways other than just providing money handouts. The rich people could help the poor by trying to set up ways of educating them or offering to train them for jobs at the companies that many rich people own, so the aid to poor does not always have to be just through donations of money.

Rich people’s money does not always get given directly to the poor. When the rich pay taxes to the government they are probably thinking that the money will be used in ways for helping the poor, but the government might not always give all the money to the poor. The government might invest the money in something else they think is a better idea. As a result, if the rich were to pay taxes trying to help the poor people, only a small amount of that money would actually get spent on the poor, whereas the great majority of the money would be spent elsewhere, so the rich people’s money is not helping the poor at all. In fact it is being spent on other things so why then should the rich pay money for the poor and then the poor not receive that money. Also it would be unfair to say all rich people don’t pay to help the poor because some do, so that’s categorizing those people wrongly.

Furthermore it’s no good giving money to the poor if they don’t know how to spend it, use it or save it. The rich shouldn’t be just giving money to the poor for them to waste. There is no sense in that. We, the rich people in life, should help educate the poor to show them how and what to spend money on and how to keep and save up the money for later use, as I said in the quote at the start.

In my opinion, donating to the poor should be done by a better system so the ...

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In my opinion, donating to the poor should be done by a better system so the people who actually need help can receive it and those people who are just lazy, or have made themselves addicts and have to beg and steal, or those who are poor through their own fault would not receive benefits from the rich. This would create less tension between the rich and the government over the benefits row. It would also mean poor people would not be able to live off rich people’s money (as many of them are doing now) but they would have to do something for themselves.

Poor people should try to have more pride in themselves and not just easily accept other people’s money because it is freely available to them. Let me explain further my point, if all their life poor people depend on money being given to them for doing nothing, then the poor person’s children will have no sense of ambition when it comes to them trying to achieve something for their life. They would probably feel that they don’t need to try to do anything with themselves as the rich people will always pay for them to live. This means the poor person is a bad example for their children and the laziness and dependency they show by the way they live through depending on other people’s money will be passed on through the generations.

To help you understand what I mean, there is a famous quote from Epictetus which states: “Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant”. This quote links with the first one about learning to fish as they both talk about educational help rather than financial help.

Personally, I believe the rich should not have to pay for poor people to live but maybe the rich should help the poor person in other ways, such as educating them or giving them jobs.

Finally to back up my point I would like to draw your attention back to the quote at the start "If you give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day but if you teach a man to fish, he will eat forever". This is what I truly believe. If you try and try again you will eventually succeed and that is the best way to live, by being proud of your own achievements and setting a good example for others to learn from.

Thank you.