> 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.
Why the downvote? He's using irony/sarcasm!
The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor
81–90 of 188 posts
Re: The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor
#82Just the photo alone made me facepalm. Why buy a riding lawn mower for five times the price of a basic push mower that would easily mow a trailer park lawn in 10 - 15 minutes?
It's not relevant to your point about the mower, but people do often put trailers on a couple of acres.
Re: The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor
#83When I was growing up and mom on welfare (80's & 90's), there was a disincentive to work harder: the more income earned, the less the subsidy at roughly a dollar per dollar. I believe that poverty is not seen as a problem by our nation's leaders but instead an opportunity to exploit & control the masses.
Re: The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
What if there is such a thing, but it only works if the people themselves do it, not the government? For a concrete example, it seems to me that one thing that helps people get out of poverty is having some savings. Being poor is expensive, often because large expenses compound due to financing, late fees, or even just an inability to make bulk purchases. Having a financial cushion can make life a lot cheaper. But th…
The few thousand dollars you might save not buying a TV or cell phone isn't going to do shit to get you out of poverty. You can't save your way out of being poor a nickle and dime at a time.
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Re: The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor
#85I 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…
That's actually one of the arguments for UBI (unconditional basic income) - it would reduce the problem that welfare can't reach many of the people who are supposed to benefit from it but too proud to ask for help. (UBI would also reduce the welfare trap mentioned in the Cato article.)
So instead of trying to allocate limited resources to those who most need it we should instead blindly split those resources equally among everyone? And this will help the poor how?
Re: The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
> No matter how much assistance you provide, it cant be so much that it disincentivizes you from rejoining the work force without facing a 'penalty'. That's the welfare cliff, and it can be solved while keeping the overall welfare system in place. It just means that we need to wean off welfare between 20k/year and 40k/year, to encourage people to work at higher paying jobs instead of penalizing people who work at hig…
We have that. It's called the earned income tax credit.
That needs to apply to _all_ government programs, like Food Stamps.
SNAP cuts off immediately once you grow above the monthly income. So if you get a raise, all of a sudden you lose all food stamp benefits.
There isn't just one welfare cliff to be solved: there are dozens. All of which need to be converted into something like the Earned Income Tax Credit (which more gradually weans people off of the Welfare as their income grows)
Re: The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor
#87>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.
R&D in Science and Technology(for military purposes) has nothing to do with a Welfare System.
DARPA is government spending towards national security, not 'investing taxes in people'.
Re: The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor
#88> 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.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10446968 and marked it off-topic.
Re: The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
My understanding is that the CATO Institute is paid for largely by the right-winger Charles Koch (a former member of the John Birch Society) and is an organization that shills right-wing thought. The CATO institute isn't an "independent think tank" - it's been set up to promote a right-wing agenda. Paul Krugman histories the development of an entire network of such entities by wealthy arch-conservatives and small-bus…
They provide some pretty straightforward calculations to back up their point. Are the calculations wrong? If so, where is the first mistake?
The calculations aren't wrong (well, they might be, but it's immaterial). What is wrong is the belief that this is the way things have to be, and that the choice is a binary "keep the status quo" or "eliminate welfare".
Why do we cut the amount of welfare people get as their income increases? Well, there's the obvious reason, that their income should supplant welfare. Is that what happens? No. Their income ends up paying less than welfare, until they earn sufficiently high amounts.
Why is that? Because the system is broken. As a cynic, I would even say that the pressure to cut it off earlier, rather than later, largely stems from conservative pressures ("if they're able to work that minimum wage job for 30 hours, then they certainly should be able to work 40! Stop their governmental handout at 30 hours!" "Okay, then we'll just work 20" "If they can work 20, they can work 30! Stop their governmental handout at 20 hours!" Etc). That is, this broken system that they're speaking out against is -exactly the broken one they caused-.
What would actually make sense? Well, tailoring off welfare payments at some percentage of earned income. Let's say 50%.
That is, someone on welfare earns $50 one month from a job, their welfare payout reduces by $25. Take into account additional costs as deductibles; things like "Driving to the job took an extra $10 from me" - okay, fine, then your welfare payout is reduced only $15. The tax payer has saved $15 (as only $35 was paid to the welfare recipient), the welfare recipient came out ahead by $25 ($50 earned + ($25 welfare + $10 gas refund/deductible) - $10 gas cost; they walk away with $75, $50 of which they earned), -and- they're working toward rejoining the workforce. Welfare effectively stops once they've reached wages of 2x welfare + cost of incidentals, and until they reach that point, every extra dollar they earn is a net gain to them; there is no valley where their purchasing power actually drops because they chose to work.
While we're at it, if we're really concerned about people working, let's also fund more job training centers, more disability rehab and job placement centers, etc.
Why don't we do all of that? Because there is no political pressure to do that; conservatives would rather completely dismantle welfare, and liberals either aren't that concerned by the status quo, or are tired of trying to work with conservatives over the issue (and so it's become a shouting match where both parties have drawn lines in the sand and refused to compromise).
Re: The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor
#90I 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…
I agree with this. Among 1st world nations, the US is the only country that has this sort of pipeline into military service. It's generally referred to as the economic draft.