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Anti-poverty programs should be unconditional

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Re: Anti-poverty programs should be unconditional

#61

Post by [deleted] »

jamilton wrote: post #50
nvahalik wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 poor are poor because they don't have money. If you give them money, they will no longer be poor, QED. I say that somewhat jokingly, but I think it's basically true. AFAIK welfare/basic income studies have shown that giving people money directly tends to work really well for increasing their life quality long-term, even long after the payments end. I don't know on what basis you think the vast majority of poor pe…

[deleted]

Re: Anti-poverty programs should be unconditional

#62

Post by lapcat »

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.

> Don’t confuse tough love with no love

The attitude that poor people need "tough love" is extremely condescending, so yes, it's difficult to distinguish tough love from no love.

> many people simply don’t think welfare is going to actually help.

The article argues that this belief is not based on the empirical evidence.

I suspect that this belief is actually the result of a condescending attitude toward poor people rather than the cause of so-called "tough love" policies.

Re: Anti-poverty programs should be unconditional

#63

Post by biomcgary »

dfxm12 wrote: post #44
Scoundreller wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is especially cruel that in the US, so many benefits are tied to employment. And so many taxes tied to employment. Not just US, but pretty much everywhere. Why discourage the most the thing you want people to do?

I'll admit it is arguable that there might be better ways to raise tax revenue than we currently are, but has anyone thought about maybe not entering the workforce because of income tax?

Not sure if this was the GPs point, but the US taxes wages (i.e., work) in addition to income, so every dollar spent on work gets more taken out of it than every other dollar.

Not entering the part-time, entrepreneurial workforce due to self-employment taxes is absolutely a thing because the bite taken out is quite large.

Wage taxes absolutely need to go, but they are tied to Social Security / Medicare, so the elite in both parties are unwilling to touch them, albeit for different reasons.

Re: Anti-poverty programs should be unconditional

#64

Post by FredPret »

maedayx wrote: post #59
FredPret wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

…or they disagree with you. Only in a bubble can complex facts seem so clear-cut.

I, for one, don’t agree that “we’ve seen time and time again” that cash handouts help.

Re: Anti-poverty programs should be unconditional

#65

Post by lapcat »

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

Nobody should be poor. It always baffles me why care and sympathy for other humans tends to disappear when they happen to reach an arbitrary age.

But perhaps you'll start caring again when they get even older? Should 80 year olds be poor? What is the appropriate age range to be poor?

Re: Anti-poverty programs should be unconditional

#66

Post by Scoundreller »

dfxm12 wrote: post #44
Scoundreller wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is especially cruel that in the US, so many benefits are tied to employment. And so many taxes tied to employment. Not just US, but pretty much everywhere. Why discourage the most the thing you want people to do?

I'll admit it is arguable that there might be better ways to raise tax revenue than we currently are, but has anyone thought about maybe not entering the workforce because of income tax?

Yes. I DIY tons of stuff, instead of working more hours in my core competency, because the economics of hiring it out are all screwed up.

Sometimes it’s ludicrous, why the hell am I, a desk jockey, doing a brake job?

Why is it more cost effective to build a retaining wall myself, with basic tools, rather than working extra hours and paying someone that does it as a career? (Btw, that retaining wall is going to last 100years).

Income tax is a form of overhead. Not just changing the economics of “saving a dollar is like making 2 dollars”, but ups the price of things.

A corporation, mainly paying taxes on its profits, not all revenue, would never have this magnitude of dilemma between outsourcing vs in-house.

This is why I prefer shifts towards taxing destruction (like carbon taxes, stranded capital) instead of taxing production.

Re: Anti-poverty programs should be unconditional

#67

Post by shuntress »

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…

> 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

First, this is an extremely toxic attitude.

Second, do you really think that people living paycheck-to-paycheck in jobs that are just barely tolerable enough to keep them from quitting are "maximizing their utility curve when compared to the opportunity costs"? Much more likely is they are stuck at a low local maxima because they can't afford to spend 2 weeks looking for a job that would better fit their skillset and preferred job functions.

Re: Anti-poverty programs should be unconditional

#68

Post by shuntress »

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…

You need to find a better job.

I wouldn't do my job without pay but I would do it even if my food & shelter expenses were covered by the state.

Re: Anti-poverty programs should be unconditional

#69

Post by mathgradthrow »

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.

As a UBI proponent, I will offer this in rebuttal. If you give labor additional negotiating power over capital, (the two coarsely defined players in this game) you will see shortages, and capital will lose a lot of value. This includes the middle class, who saved up peanuts and now have to pay people real money to do work. Those people will genuinely get screwed.

Hyperinflation is a real possibility, and UBI needs to be tuned pretty tightly to prevent it.

Re: Anti-poverty programs should be unconditional

#70

Post by shuntress »

4death4 wrote: post #46
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.

The issue with this argument is that low wages are basically marginal. E.g. a low wage earner could get $100 dollars UBI or $200 dollars working a job. A CEO, on the other hand, could get $100 UBI or 11 million working a job. I don’t know about you, but I’m definitely getting out of bed for the extra $10,999,900. I might not get out of bed for the extra $100, however.

This is an indication that there is some kind of either: 1) artificial suppression of the value of the low wage job 2) artificial inflation of the value of the CEO's job or, more likely: 3) Both.
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