A debate in development economics concerns the role of cash transfers to alleviate poverty. This was reprised again in the New York Times article (January 3, 2011) – Beat Back Poverty, Pay the Poor – which I hopefully began reading with employment creation schemes in mind. I was wrong. The article was about the growing number of anti-poverty programs in the developing world, particularly in the left-leaning Latin American nations, based on conditional cash transfers. There is no doubt that these programs have been very successful within their narrow ambit. They also are used by some progressives to argue for an extension of them into what is known as a Basic Income Guarantee (BIG). For reasons that are outlined in this blog I prefer employment guarantees as the primary way to attack poverty. I think the progressives who advocate BIGs are giving too much ground to the conservatives.