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Comment by vinhboy | Hacker News Reader

I've been trying unsuccessfully to sell this idea to my cohorts with regards to the stimulus check. My argument is, giving poor people money is a guarantee win for the community, because poor people live paycheck to paycheck and that money will be spent immediately.

No one buys my idea because it's always something like, "I don't trust them", or "why does that lazy guy deserve any money"....

I am not sure how to win that argument.

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Win? You're not going to win that argument because it isn't set up for you to win. The argument boils down to "they are undeserving". Good luck convincing someone that the person in question is, in fact, deserving because the goal posts will just get moved. Okay, go with something along the lines of "people shouldn't starve in the streets, deserving or not". And you'll be shocked at what a fellow human being will respond with.

You're basically asking, "in a time of crisis, could we quit being dicks to each other if only for a little bit?" And the answer from many will be a resounding, "nope".

Islam solved this problem a long time ago. It has a built-in "charity tax" called Zakat whereby a portion of people's wealth (as long as they make more than a minimum threshold) is donated to charity each year. The portion depends on what kind of wealth it is (e.g. for gold and silver have a different rate from produce, the former being only 2.5% per Hijri year). This ensures lifting up the poor and stimulating the economy by discouraging people from hoarding wealth, yet, it is not a socialist system because it heavily discourages people from being needy and relying on others. There were many rich and wealthy Muslims across history, and it is not frowned upon one bit.

It is historically established that there was a time, when everyone committed to paying their Zakat, that there were no more poor people left to take it!

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