It would be nice if the poor were to get even half of the money that is spent in studying them.

Vaughan’s quip targets a recurring irony in social policy and philanthropy: institutions often devote substantial resources to researching, surveying, and administratively “managing” poverty while comparatively little reaches poor people as direct aid or improved material conditions. The line implies a critique of bureaucratic overhead, academic or governmental detachment, and the tendency to treat poverty as an object of study rather than an urgent human problem. Its humor sharpens the moral point—knowledge and analysis can be valuable, but they become suspect when they substitute for action or when the systems built around “helping” the poor primarily sustain themselves.