111–120 of 188 posts
> 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.
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 grew up in Canada and went to school with rural kids, military kids, and french kids. My family wasnt in poverty but we didnt have many of the nice things others had. Around grade 5 I began to notice how we never had money for a TV, but all the welfare kids I knew had TVs in their rooms. i noticed how I had to do chores, work, save, and help neighbours to afford to buy a game console and video games, and all my fri…
I guess since we can't all openly stereotype people based on race and religion any longer we'll have to make do with stereotyping the poor. I'd love for you to show me these iPod toting welfare recipients. I'm Canadian, and can assure you that welfare recipients are not living high-on-the-hog. Due to the extremely high cost of living in Canada they are, in fact, quite impoverished http://www.ccsd.ca/factsheets/fs_ncw…
I don't think the cost of food or transit has gone up much in inflation adjusted dollars. The cost of gas and probably household energy has gone up significantly although. Overall most of the cost of living problems for the poor comes from housing.
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
No one likes a complicated manipulated tax code that favors certain firms/industries, but equating a complicated tax code that sets a higher tax rate than is normally collected to transferring tax payer dollars to shareholders of corporations is dishonest.
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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…
Except it is not that simple. People have opinions about welfare without even interacting with individuals taking advantage of it. Have you directly stopped and talked to those people buying rugs? Or at a restaurant? Are you sure they are not just hipster kids wearing second-hand clothes but who might work at Google or have a rich daddy with a trust fund?. Maybe you did, but I doubt it. So a lot of opinions and "feel…
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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?
The wealthy will, in effect, receive nothing, as their taxes will increase more than they will receive from UBI. Two of the strongest arguments for UBI are: 1) we waste a lot of money administering welfare services. UBI is designed to be inexpensive to administer, which directs more money to the poor. 2) research is beginning to suggest that direct cash transfers have better long term impact per dollar spent than jus…
Yes, but what about the working/low-middle class who currently mostly doesn't pay for nor receive welfare? That's money that could be allocated for the actual poor.
> 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 article might as well be titled: "The Myth That Those in Lower Socioeconomic Classes Respond to Incentives".
Maybe it's true, but I think a higher bar has to be set to disprove a fundamantal building block of modern economics.
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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 ou…
Why is it that when rich people vote against their self interest and vote to raise taxes, that's considered noble. But when poor people vote against their self interest and vote for the government to take less money from people other than them, they're being manipulated?
But I have a hard time believing that each poor person with less than a month in savings, working for some fast food chain, is making a rational decision voting against nationalized health care or rasing taxes, just in case they reach the American Dream, and become a successful owner of a small busininess who will be strangled and starved by high taxes from Uncle Sam when they do.
One of the biggest lies is that the rich got the poor to think of themselves as not poor, but pre-wealthy. They are just a few hard working years ago from being Donald Trump, if they just worked a bit hard (because if they don't they are just a lazy and deserve it). So as such, they sure wouldn't want to vote against the interest of the future successful selves...