Welfare buys food, but it doesn't buy dignity.

WORD.

Seriously, though, if you give people access to capital, they know how to use it. The access part is what's missing from the equation for many people in lower-income neighborhoods.

Case study: my roommate (white guy, early 30s) owns the house we live in, the warehouse next door (which contains an aborted food truck and a million bike parts for his dream coffee/bike shop), a house about an hour away that he barely makes ends meet on by renting, and a lease in SF. Motherfucker doesn't have a day job and lives off these investments, though by a somewhat narrow margin, but, notably, got all of these by loans he took out. He knows the game and the game trusts him and his co-signers.

Meanwhile, 5 blocks over, there's a dude that rolls around West Oakland on a bike mounted with a modified blender that he pedals to make daiquiris on the spot. This guy makes more profit than my roommate has in years, but lord knows he probably doesn't even have a bank account, much less does he know his way around a loan form that he could probably put to good use.

Nothing against my roommate, though, he's just a lil scatterbrained, is all.