Give a man a fish

A proverb:

Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day;
Teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime.

The moral, as if it weren't painfully obvious, is that education is far more beneficial to the recipient than charity.

The welfare argument needs some modification: unfortunately, cutting welfare in the US usually means (among other things) cutting job training programs, which are a good way to help people get off welfare.

A variant of this saying that I like is:

Give a man a match and he'll be warm for a day.
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will dragnet the bottom of the ocean floor, dump 90% of what he catches as unmarketable, pollute the skies with greasy black smoke from his fish canning factories, wipe out the various species of fish that he has been exploiting, devestate the ecosystem, process his dead into Soylent Green, fall into a deadly downward spiral of food-riots and warfare, blow up the planet, and be succeeded on the top of the food-chain by cockroaches.

That's the version I heard.

My favorite version is:

Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day.
Give a man religion, and he'll starve to death praying for a fish.

Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day.
Whack him over the head with a fish, and he'll leave you alone.

On a similar note...
Change an infant's diapers, and they will be clean for an hour.
Teach an infant to change diapers, and he just may learn by the time you need them.

The first version was in a co-worker's signature file. About two years later, was married and taking some time off after his son was born. It was at this time, the signature changed to the second version.

The neo-liberal version goes something like:

Catch a man a fish, you can sell it to him
Teach a man to fish and you ruin a perfectly good business opportunity