The average Nicaraguan is born in a shack with a dirt floor. He earns less than $15 a week.

Enrique, my gardener in Nicaragua, does much better than that. But he is still, by U.S. standards, poor. Since I am in daily contact with Enrique when I’m there, I often think about how I can help him earn more money. He wants more material goods — and who can blame him, when he sees how “well” we gringos live (in person and on television)?

Several years ago, I was tempted to give him the few thousand dollars it would have taken to make his house one of the nicest in the hamlet where he lives. But I knew from experience that it would do him no good. It would go as quickly as it came. Given money always does.

Worse, it would reinforce the very bad idea that money comes from me to him, instead of from his own labor and ingenuity.