If poor people don't have enough money, then the solution is to give some money to the poor people. Then they will have more money and so, depending upon how much we give them, the poor people will have enough money.
This is a simple solution which, sadly, all too much of politics refuses to understand.
This is also the solution that the World Bank insists would be right for Bangladesh.
Give the subsidy, the money, to the poor people. Don't subsidize a thing that some poor people use or need. Because people who are not poor will also get that subsidy on that thing. The way to make sure that the subsidy actually goes to those who are poor is to subsidize poor people, not things.
For example, there's a subsidy for fertilizer. But there are rich farmers as well as poor ones. As it happens, rich farmers -- because they're rich -- tend to have more land than poor ones. More land means more fertilizer use. So, richer farmers get more of the fertilizer subsidy than poorer ones do -- they use more of the subsidised fertilizer.
There are subsidies for electricity and those too are captured by those richer than the very poorest. The very poor use less electricity because they're very poor. It's richer people who have more electricity consuming equipment, so it's richer people who get more of the electricity subsidy.
That's not what we're trying to do with these subsidies. We want to make the poor better off. But any, and every, system of subsidy of things will suffer from the same problem. So, the answer is simple: Do not subsidize things, subsidize people.
Poverty relief should -- should, note -- mean giving money to poor people. Not constructing systems of subsidy for things.
There are other problems with the subsidy of things. India's system of subsidized rations for the very poor each month is well known for never actually reaching the relevant people: It's all been stolen, or gone rotten, long before it reaches them.
But there's another, more theoretical problem. Not everyone wants the same thing. For example, we have poor people who are not farmers. So, the money we spend upon fertilizer subsidies is still public money being spent upon poverty alleviation, but it is irrelevant for the poor who are not farmers. Or, say, poor people who have managed to buy a little solar power set up. Subsidizing electricity does little for them.
Perhaps they would like that subsidy to arrive in some different manner such as help with schooling costs. Or school uniforms. Or medical care. Or transport. Being poor means there's a whole parcel of things we might consider necessities that you cannot have.
The subsidy of a thing means that politicians, or bureaucrats, or even us in a democracy, are making the choice for those poor people of what will make their lives better.
But it's a central belief of any sort of liberalism that each individual knows best what makes their own life better.
Giving them money to then spend on what they want improves their life better than giving them a subsidy on what we think they might want.
This is not something restricted to the poor. It's true of the United States right now. Most of the American system of poverty alleviation is giving poor people things. Healthcare, or vouchers for food, or vouchers to pay the rent, or a free/cheap cellphone, and on and on it goes.
Very little of that US system is just giving poor people cash. As the US census itself admits -- though you have to read fairly deeply to find it -- this makes everyone in the US poorer than they need be.
The poor value these things at less than the cost of providing these things. The poor would rather have the money, then spend that on the things that they, themselves, think makes their lives better.
We must be honest about this. It is their lives and so their opinion of what makes their life better is the only correct, or even useful, one.
We can make everyone richer by simply giving people money. For any given rise in the standard of living of the poor, as determined by those poor people, it costs less money if we just give them the cash.
Equally, for whatever amount of money we use to subsidize the poor, we increase their living standards more by just giving them the cash.
We can all have the most lovely arguments about who should be subsidized. It might even be that the answer is no one. We can similarly have arguments about how much the subsidy should be.
But it simply is true that we gain the most effect for however much money we spend upon subsidies by not trying to subsidize goods, or services, but by just giving more money to poor people.
Or, as the World Bank means but doesn't quite say -- they have to be polite -- we should subsidize people, not things. Just give poor people cash.