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Anti-poverty programs should be unconditional

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Re: Anti-poverty programs should be unconditional

#71

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

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.

Even if I were to concede his first point (which I'm about 50% willing to do - I accept that there are actually "lazy" people in the world who will lack any intrinsic motivation to do stuff), that doesn't mean that his implication - it will be bad - follows.

When considering social policy, it is almost always going to have some good effects and some bad effects. So what we need to ask is not "is it good or bad that some people will not work if we give people money?" but rather "does the good from giving out the money outweigh the bad?"

I think that the answer is unequivocally yes. Your dad might disagree, but he'd have to explain why the bad is bigger/worse than the good.

Re: Anti-poverty programs should be unconditional

#72

Post by gruez »

shuntress wrote: post #58
gruez wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

>It's not about need or comfort. All that matters is hitting a higher score.

so basically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs#...?

Re: Anti-poverty programs should be unconditional

#73

Post by shuntress »

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.

"Tough Love" would be some kind of "Three Strikes" type of deal where your UBI is cut off if you consistently fail to demonstrate some sort of basic function.

What you are alluding to is a "no love" stance (the standard conservative viewpoint). The idea that everyone should be able to "bootstrap" themselves out of poverty.

Re: Anti-poverty programs should be unconditional

#74

Post by shuntress »

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?

No, therein does not lie the problem.

You should give them enough money every month to fully cover basic food, basic shelter, and basic expenses.

Re: Anti-poverty programs should be unconditional

#75

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

_nalply wrote: post #8
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #4

> Then, to the dismay of advocates and recipients alike, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) blocked the Democratic Party’s effort to make the expansion permanent, fearing, among other familiar concerns like the cost, that recipients would just buy drugs (the data shows that recipients spent the money on food, clothes, utilities, rent, and education). This just in: when you give people who chronically lack resources some resourc…

Sorry to disagree, but I don't think it is hatred and it is not a war. I think it is indifference mixed with selfishness and a collection of many little or perhaps not so little power grabs. One example might be that poor people can't rent a flat somewhere they can have a good life, because everybody else is already there and this is expressed in a rent poor people can't afford. Another little power grab: Call a taxi…

The reason is seems fair to refer to it somewhat metaphorically as a war is this: you don't have to go back far in US (or human) history to find a time when the existence of poverty was view as a failure of the system. That is, poor people begging in the streets reflected on the economic and social systems, and reflected badly.

Somehow, as the US became rich enough and successful enough to end all of that, we switched the narrative. Today, poverty is a personal failure, the result of bad decision making, lax moral standards, lack of sufficient entrepeneurial spirit etc.

We've switched from "fighting poverty" to "fighting poor people who are fucking things up for the rest of us".

Re: Anti-poverty programs should be unconditional

#76

Post by gruez »

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #55
gruez wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

>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.

And sticking to calling out fallacies while failing to discuss the object level question is?

>Is there an argument that you want to make or are you just going to demand that someone argue against your cliché?

1. if you look carefully I'm not the person that you originally accused of using "thought-terminating cliché"

2. You really haven't really presented any arguments for the original argument was a "thought-terminating cliché". All you did was assert that was the case and posted a wikipedia link.

Re: Anti-poverty programs should be unconditional

#77

Post by corpMaverick »

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…

Poor people are overwhelmed by an endless list problems that are not a problem for us. A car breaking down or a kid getting a stomachache is a huge deal since they have no leeway at all, they cannot miss work days, they have to think carefully even about every little purchase, like groceries, etc. Their decision making becomes impaired. They are drowning in problems, and cannot see beyond the very short term.

Having a little help like the child tax credits allows them to get their head of the water and make better decisions for the medium and long term. (like improve their education, take better care of their kids, etc.)

Re: Anti-poverty programs should be unconditional

#78

Post by gruez »

lapcat wrote: post #57
kulahan wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

Being "out on the streets" because you don't have a job is hardly a "remote possibility". It's a virtual certainly unless you have a massive cash hoard built up.

Re: Anti-poverty programs should be unconditional

#79

Post by gosub100 »

gruez wrote: post #43
gosub100 wrote: post #22

Do economists share any culpability here? I thought their job was to apply their sharp minds and apply "systems" to achieve certain goals (not limited to addressing poverty). What if we compare it to other sciences? Say we didn't understand flight as well as we do, and we have this problem where planes keep crashing, maybe 2-3 a year (like it was in the 1980s-1990s) and instead of getting to the bottom of it and fixi…

>What if in the late '70s this new virus started spreading among gay men, and doctors just shrugged and said "well we can treat the symptoms and make our best guess how to avoid it, but damned if I know what's going on..."? How long would we keep awarding academic medals, increasing professors' salaries (and of course tuition), and lauding these doctors as heroes if they never advanced the state of their art? I mean,…

I would say you're cherry picking. HIV went from death sentence to a nuisance. So again, I ask, why haven't economists made similar progress? I guess they just like winning medals and appearing elite, without actually contributing anything?

Re: Anti-poverty programs should be unconditional

#80

Post by shuntress »

gruez wrote: post #72
shuntress wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

>It's not about need or comfort. All that matters is hitting a higher score. so basically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs#... ?

You linked to specifically to the Self-actualization section which, critically, includes this line: "To understand this level of need, a person must not only succeed in the previous needs but master them"

I would say it is more like a twisted perversion of the hierarchy of needs where all levels are broken down to a single abstraction: Net worth = Score

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