After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, the Harvard economist Edward Glaeser made a provocative proposal: Instead of spending billions in federal dollars to rebuild the city, why not give the money to residents to rebuild their lives?
“Imagine that we were to spend $100 billion on infrastructure for the residents of the city,” he wrote. “An alternative to this spending is to give each one of the city of New Orleans’ residents a check for more than $200,000,” or $75,000 if expanded to include the residents of the entire metro area. In an impoverished city, that money would be life-changing.
