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Anti-poverty programs should be unconditional

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Re: Anti-poverty programs should be unconditional

#51

Post by kulahan »

tenebrisalietum wrote: post #21
mathgradthrow wrote: post #15

My father and I fight about this a lot. His take is that if you give peiple money, they won't work, which will be bad. I understand his complaint, but the empirical evidence for it is that, when welfare was tied to having children, people apparently gamed the system by using less money on their kids than the welfare provided. This seems like it's probably most american's understanding of a welfare system, and my fath…

> His take is that if you give peiple money, they won't work, which will be bad. There are a lot of people with money (high net-worth) that work (have some position in a company that they could get fired from), e.g. Jeff Bezos, many if not all CEOs, etc. So your father's take is either A) false, or B) what people with money are doing is not work, and is therefore bad.

If I knew that I'd never be out on the streets no matter how bad things got, because I at least have the money to pay rent and buy food, there's no chance I'm working anything but BS jobs for random spending money. p=1, but still, I doubt I'm that unique.

My job is difficult and takes a lot of work to get the skills necessary to do it. Who's going to take over my job? Probably nobody, but that's just my (extremely uneducated) guess.

Re: Anti-poverty programs should be unconditional

#52

Post by shuntress »

atoav wrote: post #18

Everything that is wrong with the way most of the political class pretends to fight poverty can be traced back to one principle: Divide and Conquer Solving a problem is a very stupid idea if: - your wealth depends on not solving it - people keep voting for you to solve it Not to get too political, but this equally applies to politicans who have chosen "foreigners" as their issue. A former friend of mine who turned ne…

This is not directly related to your comment but the funny thing about the "trickle down" metaphor is that it actually makes a very strong case against Reaganomics. "Water", in the metaphor, is obviously money and as we all know water (for the most part) "trickles down" from places where there is less of it to places where there is more of it. The rich get richer. The poor stay poorer. Without regular and constant application of outside force in the form of regulation, taxation, redistribution of wealth, monopoly breakups, etc (in the metaphor, this is represented by the Sun) all wealth eventually pools in the few oceans and everywhere else is barren.

Re: Anti-poverty programs should be unconditional

#53

Post by enragedcacti »

endisneigh wrote: post #16

If you give poor people money and they still had problems, then what? More money? There lies the problem. Children should not be poor, but how can you ensure accountability on the part of the parents?

> Children should not be poor, but how can you ensure accountability on the part of the parents?

What the TFA shows is that when you give parents money unconditionally they do overwhelmingly spend it on their children. Once that is understood, you must evaluate any system for measuring accountability against the cost of that very low rate of abuse.

If the means testing costs more than it saves and/or wrongly rejects too many people then whats the point of having it?

Re: Anti-poverty programs should be unconditional

#54

Post by mypastself »

hellojesus wrote: post #35
mypastself wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn’t it be the case that it’s much harder for poor people to find employment they enjoy as much as CEOs enjoy theirs? Or that ultra-rich CEOs are able to reach that status in part because their work ethics is an extreme outlier?

Of course. The only reason people work is because the expected value of their work maximizes their utility curve when compared to the opportunity costs. I go to work because I need money to live. I find employment by maximizing the pay I'm able to get conditional om my skillset and preferred job functions. But I don't see why people with lower skillsets or utility curves that weigh leisure more highly than work activ…

Not sure how that was your takeaway from my comment. I was challenging the parent comment’s assertion that CEOs continuing to work after gaining riches implies that poor people would still seek out employment if they were given basic income.

Re: Anti-poverty programs should be unconditional

#55

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

gruez wrote: post #49
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I don't see why people with lower skillsets or utility curves that weigh leisure more highly than work activities should be allowed to leech off the productive capacities of others. This is a good example of a "thought-terminating cliché"[0]. In this case, the statement assumes its own veracity, which makes it difficult to respond to in a discussion. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3…

Ironically by invoking "thought-terminating cliché", you are partaking in the very offense you accuse the parent of. Is it fair to redistribute wealth from people who are working, to give it to people who don't? There's plausible arguments for both sides, but rather than trying to argue for why we should, you drop a link to some fallacy on wikipedia and call it a day.

> Is it fair to redistribute wealth from people who are working, to give it to people who don't?

I kinda think you missed the point. This is actually just another one of those clichés. Surely you can see how this sort of communication doesn't promote a healthy discussion. Is there an argument that you want to make or are you just going to demand that someone argue against your cliché?

Re: Anti-poverty programs should be unconditional

#56

Post by mypastself »

lambertsimnel wrote: post #48
mypastself wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn’t it be the case that it’s much harder for poor people to find employment they enjoy as much as CEOs enjoy theirs? Or that ultra-rich CEOs are able to reach that status in part because their work ethics is an extreme outlier?

Couldn’t it be the case that a universal basic income that gives low-wage workers more choice would increase competition among their employers, resulting in low-wage work becoming more enticing?

For whom would this type of work become more enticing? I don’t follow.

Re: Anti-poverty programs should be unconditional

#57

Post by lapcat »

kulahan wrote: post #51
tenebrisalietum wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> His take is that if you give peiple money, they won't work, which will be bad. There are a lot of people with money (high net-worth) that work (have some position in a company that they could get fired from), e.g. Jeff Bezos, many if not all CEOs, etc. So your father's take is either A) false, or B) what people with money are doing is not work, and is therefore bad.

If I knew that I'd never be out on the streets no matter how bad things got, because I at least have the money to pay rent and buy food, there's no chance I'm working anything but BS jobs for random spending money. p=1, but still, I doubt I'm that unique. My job is difficult and takes a lot of work to get the skills necessary to do it. Who's going to take over my job? Probably nobody, but that's just my (extremely un…

> If I knew that I'd never be out on the streets no matter how bad things got, because I at least have the money to pay rent and buy food, there's no chance I'm working anything but BS jobs for random spending money. p=1, but still, I doubt I'm that unique.

You can already do that.

Are you claiming that the only reason you have your current job is to avoid the remote possibility of being out on the streets?

Re: Anti-poverty programs should be unconditional

#58

Post by shuntress »

gruez wrote: post #28
tenebrisalietum wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> His take is that if you give peiple money, they won't work, which will be bad. There are a lot of people with money (high net-worth) that work (have some position in a company that they could get fired from), e.g. Jeff Bezos, many if not all CEOs, etc. So your father's take is either A) false, or B) what people with money are doing is not work, and is therefore bad.

>There are a lot of people with money (high net-worth) that work (have some position in a company that they could get fired from), e.g. Jeff Bezos, many if not all CEOs, etc. The exception doesn't prove the rule. Just because some really driven people are willing to be a CEO when they have far more money than they could ever need, doesn't mean that the average burger flipper is going to continue working at mcdonalds…

> when they have far more money than they could ever need

There is a kind of brain rot that can set in on wealthy people that makes them see their net worth as their score. It's not about need or comfort. All that matters is hitting a higher score.

Re: Anti-poverty programs should be unconditional

#59

Post by maedayx »

FredPret wrote: post #39
malfist wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the conservative, punish the poor, attitude of your post, I really don't think you want to know why the poor are poor. I'll give you a hint, look at wealth distribution graphs

I think lots of conservatives desperately want to help the poor, just not in ways that might seem kind & empathetic to you. Don’t confuse tough love with no love - many people simply don’t think welfare is going to actually help.

But as we've seen time and again, those people are wrong. Giving people money helps, period. So either these people are simply ignoring facts, or they are not participating in good faith.

Re: Anti-poverty programs should be unconditional

#60

Post by datadrivenangel »

nvahalik wrote: post #30
datadrivenangel wrote: post #6

We're not fighting poverty, we're fighting poor people! Which is a very expensive war, so it might be cheaper to give some of that money to the poor people, so they can spend it more effectively.

Yes, but _why_ are they poor? This is the thing that bothers me about this conversation more than anything. It's like giving pain killers to someone who has pain—in some cases that may be the only real solution but arguably the vast, VAST majority of the time, there is a basic desire to do the same thing repeatedly hoping for a different outcome. Giving money to people who aren't willing to change only perpetuates th…

The vast majority of the times people should use painkillers are for temporary injuries that will stop hurting in time. Helping people through this is good.

Likewise, for people who have chronic pain, if we have the capacity to help ease their pain, we should do that.

The question of what to do with the people who are enabled to avoid the work required to eliminate the source of their pain is a hard one, but I don't think that threatening people with starvation and homelessness is something we should aspire towards.

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