What is the Right Way To Take Care of the Poor?

Pope Francis has called for governments to redistribute wealth to the poor. He is doing so to help reduce what he considers to be an “economy of exclusion.”

I share that spirit of generosity. I know you do, too. This is because we care about people. We know that our wealth is a gift from Above, and we have the responsibility to share it. We do not need the government to force us to do our jobs as moral people.

Many ways are available for the individual citizen to help those less fortunate. One extremely dynamic way is to allocate a portion of your life insurance policy to the charity of your choice. For example, you could take as little as 5% of the total benefit and direct it to an organization that feeds the hungry or houses the homeless.

Think about that for a second. Let’s suppose you have $1 million of coverage. You could assign just $50,000 to the charity. Would your family or business still be able to manage? Odds are, they would (if not, you could do a little bit of asset reshuffling to make it work).

Since every dollar of life insurance benefit costs merely pennies, this would be a superbly economical gift. It would also provide the type of connection that people in trouble need. The charities that help the poor are typically staffed by of local friends and neighbors. These people have personal connections with the disadvantaged. We just have to give them enough money to help the poor get a new start in life.

Our life insurance payment can fund that rebirth. It could fuel the “economy of inclusion” that society needs without involving a useless and wasteful government bureaucracy.

How do you feel we should take care of the poor?