Give a fish or teach to fish: Neither is enough

 You may have heard the saying that “If you give a man a fish you feed him for a day but if you teach him to fish you feed him for a lifetime.” It’s a nice saying but, unfortunately, there is one more required element. A man must be free to fish. If the government puts up obstacles to fishing, usually in the form of taxation and regulation, especially occupational licensing, then the man may still be poor even though he knows how to fish.

There are many starving people in places like Zimbabwe and North Korea and Cuba where people know how to fish (i.e., practice a profession) but are prevented from doing so. Under Barack Obama and the liberals in Congress the U.S. is also headed in this direction.