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The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor

nytimes.com

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Re: The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor

#41

Post by JupiterMoon »

bigforbritches wrote: post #23
JupiterMoon wrote: post #17

> The Cato Institute is a public policy research organization — a think tank – dedicated to the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets and peace. So no agenda there then.

Agenda or not, data-driven or not, thoroughly studied or not, authoritative-backers or not it all boils down to how people feel about welfare. All else is largely pencil-pushing. If you want to shape economic policy that is sustainable & impactful, it has to make a large allowance for how people feel about welfare. Let me elaborate. You can make well-reasoned arguments and appeal to the sound nature of people and hop…

Right so we should maximise the efficiency of welfare programs and ensure that they are fair (in some way). If it is true that cash is better than vouchers in terms of efficiency then we should give cash.

Re: The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor

#42

Post by readme »

xacaxulu wrote: post #13

I was born into a single parent family in a trailer park. I worked my way out of that situation including serving in the US Marines in order to pay for college. Even coming from a background that should have led my family to use welfare (mom was too proud and cleaned houses instead) I tend to lean more towards the idea that welfare and the nanny state in general hurt more than they help. The CATO Institute does a lot…

I'm in the Army.

What do you think about people who don't qualify to join the military? What should they do? The military is a life saver for a lot of people, but not everyone can do it.

Re: The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor

#43

Post by abalone »

xacaxulu wrote: post #13

I was born into a single parent family in a trailer park. I worked my way out of that situation including serving in the US Marines in order to pay for college. Even coming from a background that should have led my family to use welfare (mom was too proud and cleaned houses instead) I tend to lean more towards the idea that welfare and the nanny state in general hurt more than they help. The CATO Institute does a lot…

Every Cato Institute loving Silicon Valley Libertarian should learn this one word:

DARPA

$3 Billion / year of taxpayer funds invested in the tech industry. Plus, lots of other government agencies and procurement involved in nurturing tech.

I mean literally Siri was invented by DARPA.[1] And you can thank it for your next autonomous car.[2] Also a thing called the Internet.

So tell us again how investing in people is a corrupting influence but investing in tech companies is critical early-stage support?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CALO

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge

Re: The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor

#44

Post by lostcolony »

xacaxulu wrote: post #13

I was born into a single parent family in a trailer park. I worked my way out of that situation including serving in the US Marines in order to pay for college. Even coming from a background that should have led my family to use welfare (mom was too proud and cleaned houses instead) I tend to lean more towards the idea that welfare and the nanny state in general hurt more than they help. The CATO Institute does a lot…

A bit tangential, but I'd also argue that the military as recourse is, itself, an unfair burden on poor people.

Rich kids don't feel compelled to enlist just to make financial ends meet. Even I (single parent household, parent was a teacher), when faced with an inability to find a job when out of high school, had the grades and support to 'fall back' onto college instead. I wasn't forced to risk my life just to stay solvent.

More on point, though, I think a lot of people with this view conflate the particular implementation of welfare (itself a cause of compromise between right and left wing), with the nature of welfare itself. That is, because there is such a wide gap between "welfare, not working", and "fully self supported" that unless you can land in a job that pays well it doesn't make sense from a total utility perspective for many to find a low wage job and work that in lieu of (or alongside partial) welfare, we dismiss the idea of welfare completely. Or by example, the person on disability who is unable to work full time, but who, if they try to work above X amount of hours, ends up -losing- money, due to loss of disability benefits, as well as (obviously) losing on free time, and so ends up not working as much as they could. Due to cases like that, many people end up blaming welfare itself, rather than a flawed implementation of it.

Per another commenter, I too think a UBI would address this (as well as the basic issue that with more automation we have less need of people working, and I'd prefer someone trying to figure out what useful work they could do that would result in them getting paid for the real utility they provide, rather than just taking an unnecessary job just to make ends meet. Wage slavery in jobs that could be automated is an even more flawed form of welfare than government handouts).

Re: The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor

#45

Post by thatusertwo »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #32
websocketpuppet wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This shows the gaming of the US Welfare system and the inherent disincentives to work. http://www.salon.com/2010/03/16/hipsters_food_stamps_pinched...

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2011/01/hipsters-food-stamps-and-...

Here in Ontario, Canada, whenever the teacher go on strike everyone else gets up in arms, the reality is that the teachers are one of the few areas of employment that still have good wages and benefits. Instead of saying we need to bring everyone down to the lowest level we should be asking for everyone to be pulled up to the level of teachers.

Note: Unlike other places, teaching is a great job in Ontario.

Re: The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor

#46

Post by rdtsc »

projectileboy wrote: post #35

Getting average citizens worked up over welfare is a standard way for the extremely wealthy and powerful to distract those same average citizens from noticing where their tax money gets squandered the most - large corporate subsidies, infrastructure projects that benefit the richest neighborhoods, and so on, and so on. The largest welfare programs I know of are unneeded weapons systems, which very intentionally subco…

At the end of the day it boils down to that fact that the poor as a class, are easily abused and manipulated -- by governments, private entities, even the poor themselves.

One of the most perverted ways they are abused is they are convinced to vote against their own interests. For example thinking back at Obama's healthcare reform and the fate of the single payer option vis-a-vis the "get your socialist government outta my Medicare" crowd. Even further up the line, gutting education also pretty much ensures a future crowd of uneducated easily manipulated crowds for the next generation to abuse and take advantage of. So the system is already set to self-perpetuate.

As a side note, speaking of manipulating, a good example is always Bush Jr. using evangelicals in his campaigns in early 2000s.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jesus/evangeli...

I think that was a brilliant move to use them, because they were a lot of them (1), they were relatively wealthy (2), they were easily reached, as they already congregated in large clubs i.e. megachurches (3), they are easily brainwashed with the right words (4).

Re: The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor

#47

Post by a_c_s »

merpnderp wrote: post #10
chongli wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, aren't most of the people in this country poor because of mental illness or addiction? No! They're poor because their parents were poor or because they grew up in a poor neighbourhood and lacked access to a proper education. This article highlights one egregious myth but far more pernicious is the one you just highlighted: that poverty is a personal or moral failing rather than a lack of opportunity. It's rea…

"lacked access to a proper education". How does that explain Washington DC with the highest levels of funding per child in the country? Every kid has access to a well funded school with well paid teachers. I think it's easier to defend the claim that the kids lacked guidance and support to take advantage of the education provided for them. In the US a single mom who homeschools, with only a high school education, wil…

High levels of funding != quality education. Washington DC schools recently celebrated a rise in graduation rate, to 64%. [1]

My brother went to public high school in Washington DC graduating in 2008. His school had tracking, meaning you could only take classes available in your "track". A student was in either all honors/advanced classes or in all regular classes but could not take a mix of both.

The regular track was exclusively black, while the honors track was for white and/or rich students, regardless of actual academic performance!

Unless a non-white student is both high achieving and has parents who are able to navigate the bureaucratic nightmare that is the DC public schools (it was a mess even for upper-middle class white students like my brother) they don't really have an opportunity for anything other than a poor education.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/graduation-ra...

Re: The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor

#48

Post by solomatov »

snarfy wrote: post #39
projectileboy wrote: post #35

Getting average citizens worked up over welfare is a standard way for the extremely wealthy and powerful to distract those same average citizens from noticing where their tax money gets squandered the most - large corporate subsidies, infrastructure projects that benefit the richest neighborhoods, and so on, and so on. The largest welfare programs I know of are unneeded weapons systems, which very intentionally subco…

The amount paid to corporate subsidies is pretty obscene: http://imgur.com/ttNcwHA

Are you sure that all these corporate subsidies are that bad? Do you have information of breakdown of the target of subsidies by companies?

For example, Tesla receive about 5b$ of government subsidies. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-2015... This, I think, is investment which really worth it, it's the most innovative automotive company in the world, and it would be impossible without this.

Re: The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor

#49

Post by solomatov »

snarfy wrote: post #39
projectileboy wrote: post #35

Getting average citizens worked up over welfare is a standard way for the extremely wealthy and powerful to distract those same average citizens from noticing where their tax money gets squandered the most - large corporate subsidies, infrastructure projects that benefit the richest neighborhoods, and so on, and so on. The largest welfare programs I know of are unneeded weapons systems, which very intentionally subco…

The amount paid to corporate subsidies is pretty obscene: http://imgur.com/ttNcwHA

Also, the sum $4000 sounds too round for me, especially taking into account, that other numbers provided doesn't contain so many zeroes in them.

Re: The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor

#50

Post by orangecat »

abalone wrote: post #40
tonomics wrote: post #16

>Many governments have economic advisers with degrees from the United States who share the same ideology He's right, but the ideology is social democracy, not free market capitalism

Hey guess what? Silicon Valley is a product of massive amounts of government funding too. DARPA's budget is about $3B this year alone. You can thank Uncle Sam for autonomous vehicles, Siri and the Internet, to pick just three. So if investing taxes in people isn't "free market capitalism" then neither is the tech industry.

DARPA's budget is about $3B this year alone.

Compared to $10 billion in R&D for Microsoft and Intel and $8 billion for Google: http://fortune.com/2014/11/17/top-10-research-development/

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