Uber for Welfare

I'd take a few of countries that you think are good examples, why, and their median PPP household income and/or examples of the life of a typical person. For example, here are some negative examples:

- USSR:

The USSR had a centrally planned economy, with centrallly planned wages designed to limit differentiation between those at the top of the income scale and those at the bottom. A typical family lived in a ~10x10 single room apartment. Often these apartments did not have kitchens, and never 'bedrooms' (I do mean 'single room.). Even though the workers were 'paid', they often could not buy basic things like food, soap, and toilet paper due to chronic underproduction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_apartment

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Soviet_Union

http://reason.com/blog/2015/04/06/revealed-the-final-stage-o...

http://articles.philly.com/1989-07-21/news/26131831_1_soap-p...

- Cuba

Cuba's economy is dominated by state-run enterprises, with 76% public sector employment. In Cuba, employees in some skilled professions that are not favored by the state, like medical doctors, work in slave-like conditions. GDP per capita is only $10k PPP, less than 1/5th that of the USA. References:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/mary-ogrady-cubas-slave-trade-in...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Cuba

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States

- China

In the mid 1990s, China's state-owned economy was teetering on bankruptcy. As an experiment, China began to allow select cities to ignore the old rules on enterprise management, wages, guaranteed employment, etc. By the late 90's, these cities had spawned some of the largest appliance manufacturers in the world, and China began to implement these policies more broadly. Since the reforms, China's GDP has risen tenfold, with productivity increases accounting for nearly half of the rise. During the reform period, PPP per capita incomes have grown at ~6.6% annually.

http://www.economist.com/node/21528262

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_economic_reform

That is what I would consider two well-documented examples countries with large social apparatuses that resulted in disaster, and one that significantly improved the standard of living for everyone by scrapping their old guarantees. I was hoping that you could provide me with something similar to support your views.

There's another option to those who are hungry and suffering. Perhaps you should read up on the French Revolution. There's a rational self-interest argument to helping other people so that they do not reach levels of desperation where violence is a reasonable alternative.

>You can make 20k flipping burgers at McDonalds. 20k is enough to build up a safety cushion.

If you are single with no dependents, live in a cheap area, and live close to work, maybe.

We are having a general discussion (thank you for the thoughtful discussion, BTW), and not to get too deep into specific policy plans but I'd like to see a two tiered approach.

First tier: Long term employees living off of the wage. There is a minimum, living wage. It should be enough to support a person and at least one dependent at 40 hours a a week. There should be a national living wage which represents the absolute floor and state and local living wages that can add to that based on local cost of living differences.

Second tier: Short term employees or employees not living off of the wage. No minimum wage at all at this tier. Intended for teenagers, the elderly that just want to work, the independently wealthy or otherwise supported that just want to work for pocket money or because the structure of the organization doesn't allow for volunteers.

This would be enforced simply by the government charging businesses if their employees file for welfare for the cost of the welfare + administrative cost + a small penalty.

If your business requires long term, well trained employees you'd better pay them enough that the public is not subsidizing them.

However, if you can get away with using teenagers, college students, or the bored elderly, and people that generally don't have to work to survive if they don't want to, then more power to you. Pay what you want.

>Not different at all. If that fool loses his job, he'll lose every last thing he has, because he doesn't own it and the bank will take it back. Yes, his path to homelessness was more comfortable, but he'll end up in the same place.

Considering how much he's making, I'd say he probably has some sort of personal human capital built up and is not in nearly as dire a situation as someone who hasn't had that opportunity that ends up at zero or worse.

> I find the idea of forcibly taking from one person to give to another abhorrent.

Really? I find the idea of paying to live in a society that provides much more value for any amount of money I can give perfectly acceptable -- certainly more desirable than the alternative. You don't think you'd benefit from living in a society where no one would have to worry about starving, going homeless, or affording their meds?

I'm not advocating this out of the goodness of my heart or to prevent human suffering. It is a cold calculation that happens to look like altruism. The highest expected utility for a system of transactions (the market) can only be achieved if the group of transactions is overall positive. The only way to guarantee this result is if every transaction within that system is positive. The only way to guarantee that every transaction is positive is if all parties to the transaction see a net gain in value. When the best alternative to a negotiated agreement is negative and the other party knows this, they can exploit it (and they will if they are rational). This means one party loses and the other gains value or utility. This is the situation the desperately poor are in when they sell their time. They are in a known bad position. What was a guarantee is now a question. Does the gain in value of the one party override the loss in value of the other? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It is hard to guarantee a win-win transaction in every case for many different reasons (information asymmetry, externalities not taken into account etc.) but in this case it is easy and it affects a huge swath of our society -- just guarantee they can walk away from a transaction without coming to harm. Just that simple. Looks altruistic but is really about maximizing overall utility. Why play with finding the spot where exploitation tips the scale into overall negative value if we don't have to?

Welfare is more than just payment while unemployed. Access to cheap higher education, strong programs promoting raising of children (family leave is an example), access to healthcare without fear of bankruptcy and things like this are part of welfare in my opinion. Also adequate prison programs to decrease recidivism, strong laws protecting workers from exploitation. The list goes on. These are all forms of welfare and they help to ensure a healthy environment for living for everyone.