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Opinion: Cash isn't going to solve all the poor's problems NOAH SMITH/BLOOMBERG OPINION Right now, many ideas for helping lower-income Americans revolve around giving them cash. That includes COVID-19 relief checks, extended unemployment benefits and the dueling child tax-credit proposals by President Joe Biden and Sen. Mitt Romney. But periodic cash can't solve all problems. There's a strong argument for focusing on making sure that all Americans have long-term access to the basic physical necessities of life. In a recent essay, economist Eli Dourado points out that those basics — food, shelter, health care and utilities — make up a larger share of spending for the people at the bottom of the income distribution. Taking just the first three (since utilities are combined with other things in the data), it's easy to see that lower-income people have to spend more of what they have on necessities.