From Nicholas Kristof's New York Times column, reported from Baltimore:
helping people is harder than it looks.
One valuable program is WIC, which provides nutritional support for women, infants and children. Yet because it gives free infant formula to low-income mothers, it unintentionally discourages breast-feeding.
"If I had to buy formula, with no WIC vouchers, I'd breast-feed," Alia Brooks, a teenage single mom in Baltimore, told me.
In short, helping people is complicated.
Agreed.