12 ms·

The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor

95 points by __Joker 11y ago

jostmey 11y ago
The cash assistance programs being cited were carried out in poor countries, from what I can tell. Maybe that works in a country where you never have enough. I'm not sure the results apply here to the United States. I could not disagree more with the title, based on my own observations. I mean, aren't most of the people in this country poor because of mental illness or addiction?
- rayiner 11y ago
  What? No. 15% of the population is at or below the poverty line. Very few of them have ment illness or addiction. Most are simply born into circumstances with little opportunity (urban or rural), and don't have the exceptional qualities needed to break out of those trajectories.
  - michaelbuddy 11y ago
    People who aren't exceptional work and save money all the time. Working jobs doesn't require exceptional people. Also do you know the 'poverty' line isn't exactly the line where you're happy or sad. Many people are there and afford all necessities.
    - mikeash 11y ago
      Working jobs doesn't require exceptional people. Lifting yourself out of poverty by working jobs often does.
- chongli 11y ago
  I mean, aren't most of the people in this country poor because of mental illness or addiction? No! They're poor because their parents were poor or because they grew up in a poor neighbourhood and lacked access to a proper education. This article highlights one egregious myth but far more pernicious is the one you just highlighted: that poverty is a personal or moral failing rather than a lack of opportunity. It's really simple: people are poor because they don't have enough money. Don't let yourself fall into the Just-World Fallacy.
  - merpnderp 11y ago
    "lacked access to a proper education". How does that explain Washington DC with the highest levels of funding per child in the country? Every kid has access to a well funded school with well paid teachers. I think it's easier to defend the claim that the kids lacked guidance and support to take advantage of the education provided for them. In the US a single mom who homeschools, with only a high school education, will have her child place in the top 70% of public school kids. Parental involvement is so important, it's the only factor that matters.
    - JupiterMoon 11y ago
      Difficult to be involved if you both work 40+ hours a week doing physically demanding jobs.
      - merpnderp 11y ago
        And yet tens of millions of people do it every year in the US. It's all about priorities.
    - msbarnett 11y ago
      > lacked access to a proper education". How does that explain Washington DC with the highest levels of funding per child in the country? Every kid has access to a well funded school with well paid teachers. Education funding in the US is wildly uneven. Spend some time visiting inner-city schools. They are not even remotely "well-funded". Property-tax driven school funding formulas ensure that richer areas have much, much better funded schools than poor areas.
      - rayiner 11y ago
        Inner city public schools are some of the most well-funded in the county. Washington DC is almost entirely "inner city" public schools (I.e. Almost all the student population is low income) and has the highest per student spending. The wealthy suburb of DC where I grew up spends $13,500 per student per year. That's a lot less than DC or Baltimore or Chicago, all of which have 70-85% low-income students, and only moderately more than Philadelphia, which is also almost all "inner city" schools.
- IkmoIkmo 11y ago
  Tons of studies have been done for the last few decades and they show a pretty solid consensus (not completely unanimous but it's pretty strong) that wealth and success in this country are very largely hereditary, that socioeconomic mobility is pretty flat (and very flat relative to other developed economies except maybe the UK) and that the American dream (rags to riches for anyone who works hard, i.e. social mobility based on merit and effort) is a myth. So no, if you're poor in the US it's not just because you've got a mental illness, that's a very wrong view of the world. Poverty is a big issue in the US and it is distinct from many (not all) developed economies for having a lot of working poverty, i.e. people who are not ill, do not suffer substance abuse, who aren't homeless and who have a job (often multiple) and yet are poor. That is very much an American phenomenon, no other developed country has so many normal people who have jobs and yet are poor and who struggle to leave their children a better life than they enjoyed.
err4nt 11y ago
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 friends on welfare had every system and every game. I would wonder why my lunch had an apple in place of their Fruit Rollups and Cookies. One kid even got a pack of starbursts in his lunch every single day, if I was lucky, he would share or trade one with me. Now that Im an adult I can see that my parents priorty with their limited finances were GOOD food, GOOD clothes, and the necessities we needed for success. I kind of wonder how many kids that grew up on welfare are packing Fruit Rollups in their kids lunches today, how many welfare kids walk around with iPhones when lower middle class families cant afford it, etc. It has been my observation in Canada that what seems to work with cash assistance is a cushion to break your fall, not an IV dripping just-enough to not have to work. Where I lived you also had to prove you were applying for work to stay on it, but if you got a minimum-wage full-time job you would lose your welfare but not have as much money, so of course everybody's parents applied as often as they needed to, only went to work when they absolely needed to, and quit as soon as they possibly could to regain or keep the welfare status. And of course they modelled this to their kids. So I do think welfare can totally short circuit personal success, Ive seen many lives reduced to manipulating a aystem instead of becoming something beneficial to others. Its sad but I believe its human nature No matter how much assistance you provide, it cant be so much that it disincentivizes you from rejoining the work force without facing a 'penalty'.
- crdoconnor 11y ago
  >Ive seen many lives reduced to manipulating a aystem instead of becoming something beneficial to others Well, it ought to prepare them for a life dealing with corporate politics in that case.
- snickerdoodles 11y ago
  Yep - we have signs to not feed the animals, or they become dependent on us for food...
xacaxulu 11y ago
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 of research into this. http://www.cato.org/blog/how-welfare-state-traps-poor-dependency-british-version http://www.cato.org/blog/how-welfare-state-traps-poor-depend...
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10446982 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10446982
- websocketpuppet 11y ago
  This shows the gaming of the US Welfare system and the inherent disincentives to work. http://www.salon.com/2010/03/16/hipsters_food_stamps_pinched/ http://www.salon.com/2010/03/16/hipsters_food_stamps_pinched...
  - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
    https://www.jacobinmag.com/2011/01/hipsters-food-stamps-and-the-politics-of-resentment/ https://www.jacobinmag.com/2011/01/hipsters-food-stamps-and-...
    - thatusertwo 11y ago
      Here in Ontario, Canada, whenever the teacher go on strike everyone else gets up in arms, the reality is that the teachers are one of the few areas of employment that still have good wages and benefits. Instead of saying we need to bring everyone down to the lowest level we should be asking for everyone to be pulled up to the level of teachers. Note: Unlike other places, teaching is a great job in Ontario.
  - lostcolony 11y ago
tonomics 11y ago
>Many governments have economic advisers with degrees from the United States who share the same ideology He's right, but the ideology is social democracy, not free market capitalism
- abalone 11y ago
  Hey guess what? Silicon Valley is a product of massive amounts of government funding too. DARPA's budget is about $3B this year alone. You can thank Uncle Sam for autonomous vehicles, Siri and the Internet, to pick just three. So if investing taxes in people isn't "free market capitalism" then neither is the tech industry.
  - orangecat 11y ago
    DARPA's budget is about $3B this year alone. Compared to $10 billion in R&D for Microsoft and Intel and $8 billion for Google: http://fortune.com/2014/11/17/top-10-research-development/ http://fortune.com/2014/11/17/top-10-research-development/
    - mikeash 11y ago
      Pretty much all of that money comes from selling stuff they are only able to sell because of previous government R&D. For example, without the government leaning heavily on integrated circuits in the 60s, would Microsoft and Google even exist today?
    - abalone 11y ago
      ...in late stage development which is MUCH less risky. Super risky early stage tech development mostly happens in the public sector at taxpayer expense through government agencies like DARPA.
      - zo1 11y ago
        A lot of things are easier when it happens with other people's money. A lot of those projects didn't necessarily have the expectation to make/turn a profit.
JupiterMoon 11y ago
> 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.
- tonomics 11y ago
  Same could be said about NY Times
  - ydhdjpwpdj 11y ago
    Or even you.
  - kaonashi 11y ago
    Apples & right-wing think tanks.
- dublinclontarf 11y ago
  As opposd to the publishers of THIS report?
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    Of course. Everyone has an agenda. Examples in this field are: (1) minimise the tax burden for their donors (2) minimise poverty (3) to grab as much funding as possible. There are many more. What is interesting about the results (which include peer reviewed studies - the one in mentioned by the NYT doesn't seem to be peer reviewed) suggesting that cash handouts are more efficient than than more complicated welfare programs is that the cash handouts would eliminate the middle man and maximise the bang for buck of helping people in poverty. I.E. minimising the size of the charity or the government bureaucracy.
- bigforbritches 11y ago
  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 hope that they will understand & internalize your case for welfare. You can back it up with scores of studies that have data stretching multiple decades. You can provide touching anecdotes that tug at the heart strings. You can do all that and yet people will not have a change of heart for more than a fleeting moment. I will give you an account of how workaday people - sensible people - really think about welfare and handouts in general. For this, I will stick to America & Americans although this could easily be extrapolated to other parts of the world. I strongly believe that most non-welfare dependent ( & even most welfare-resenting ) Americans are like me. For this purpose let me also exclude the portion of the population that are impetuously dismissive of the "freeloaders" and "deadbeats". Including them would not be helpful here. Having said that I think most sensible Americans are fine with some form of "public assistance" ( lump into this whatever forms of unearned perks, benefits, allowances, tax breaks, subsidies etc that the government lavishes on the low income or even some middle income people ) for those people who have fallen on hard times. Most sensible Americans are also fine with those same forms of "public assistance" being bestowed upon those same sections of the public for even extended durations of their lifetimes. I think sensible Americans get that the ill effects of an impoverished childhood & other social curses can stretch for the better part of a generation, if not more. What most sensible Americans won't stand for is when those benefits are still lavished on those sections of the society even when those previously disenfranchised people are now, well, no longer beggared. Take the case of San Francisco. It is not uncommon to find yourself dining at a restaurant where your fellow diners constitute a good chunk of these previously beggared classes. You think ,"good for them." It is not uncommon to find them shopping at upmarket home furnishing stores. You think,"hmm...okay..they share my taste in rugs." It is also not uncommon to find them gushingly sharing photos & videos of their fantastic vacations to Iceland or Namibia. You think, "I wish I could take a month away from work. Well, perhaps next year." It is not uncommon to find your kids struggle to stuff their applications to the same top tier colleges as these previously beggared classes who are suddenly competing with your flock, to be one among the lucky 6% or 7% that constitute the incoming class at a Yale, Columbia or Harvard. Now you think, "screw all these welfare programs for deadbeats and moochers." That's what it all boils down to. Everyone's fine with handouts until it starts to get too close to home. Your entitlements end where my feelings of hurt begin. We can differ on the degree & scale but that's the general sentiment of most sensible workaday Americans.
projectileboy 11y ago
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 subcontract work out to nearly every congressional district in the land (see the B-2 as an example).
- snarfy 11y ago
  The amount paid to corporate subsidies is pretty obscene: http://imgur.com/ttNcwHA http://imgur.com/ttNcwHA
  - solomatov 11y ago
    Are you sure that all these corporate subsidies are that bad? Do you have information of breakdown of the target of subsidies by companies? For example, Tesla receive about 5b$ of government subsidies. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-20150531-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-2015... This, I think, is investment which really worth it, it's the most innovative automotive company in the world, and it would be impossible without this.
    - mikeash 11y ago
      Nitpick: the $4.9 billion figure is for Tesla, SpaceX, and SolarCity combined.
  - solomatov 11y ago
    Also, the sum $4000 sounds too round for me, especially taking into account, that other numbers provided doesn't contain so many zeroes in them.
  - solomatov 11y ago
    Actually I opened the source: http://www.commondreams.org/views/2013/09/23/add-it-average-american-family-pays-6000-year-subsidies-big-business http://www.commondreams.org/views/2013/09/23/add-it-average-... Here're their largest points: 1. $1268 - for overpriced medications 2. $1231 - for revenue loss from tax havens 3. $870 - for corporate tax subsidies All of them are very questionable.
sageikosa 11y ago
So why not charity? Why must helping the poor be a government function?
- Futurebot 11y ago
  That's because it doesn't work on a large scale. It especially doesn't work during periods of crisis: http://www.democracyjournal.org/32/the-voluntarism-fantasy.php?page=all http://www.democracyjournal.org/32/the-voluntarism-fantasy.p... http://articles.latimes.com/2014/mar/30/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20140330 http://articles.latimes.com/2014/mar/30/business/la-fi-hiltz... http://www.salon.com/2009/03/16/turse/ http://www.salon.com/2009/03/16/turse/
PythonicAlpha 11y ago
Given, there is a corrupting influence of undeserved money on people ... Something similar would be interesting to know (but I guess, will never be researched): How corrupting is the influence of state-money poured into many industries of western nations, because those states want to support their own big industries (like military industry, energy, ...) and are lobbied into doing so ... the result: Money goes on and on into the same corporations, but small companies get nothing.
nraynaud 11y ago
I come from a country where the thinking is that people gets minimal helps for the government in exchange for them not voting for the nazis, like the Germans did (that's the shorter, but I think it's fair). Every country has its story and point of view on welfare. I just hope they don't go too American here, because I have not been employed in the last 3 years.
tremols 11y ago
I think that either the author got it wrong, or its just cheap socialist propaganda. Corruption is not about buying alcohol and tobacco or avoiding work, it is about becoming dependent on nanny estate to a point of: a) blindly supporting the populist politicians even if they are corrupt. b) ignoring the consequences of unsustainable public spending like debt and inflation. (Again, while corrupt bankers and bureaucrats become richer creating a greater inequality).
kaa2102 11y ago
Corporate welfare has a corrupting influence on democracy and capital markets.
akallio9000 11y ago
Just the photo alone made me facepalm. Why buy a riding lawn mower for five times the price of a basic push mower that would easily mow a trailer park lawn in 10 - 15 minutes?
- maxerickson 11y ago
  It's not relevant to your point about the mower, but people do often put trailers on a couple of acres.
- baobabaobab 11y ago
  You're looking at a piece of equipment that can be used to generate income, maybe that's what it's for. It also could have been cheap/broken/free, and they intend to flip it.
jorge-fundido 11y ago
When I was growing up and mom on welfare (80's & 90's), there was a disincentive to work harder: the more income earned, the less the subsidy at roughly a dollar per dollar. I believe that poverty is not seen as a problem by our nation's leaders but instead an opportunity to exploit & control the masses.
caseysoftware 11y ago
Money in politics corrupts! Money in the financial markets is evil! Money in health care taints decision making! But money going to poor people? Nah, there are no downsides at all. If money encourages bad behavior and poor decision making, then it shouldn't apply in all of these situations? Or alternatively, maybe it's not the money at all but the people themselves?
ethagknight 11y ago
Wait, confused how Bush brainwashed and manipulated evangelicals? The linked article discusses the Bush whitehouse reaching out to constituents. Are evangelicals really easy to brainwash?
- rdtsc 11y ago
  > Are evangelicals really easy to brainwash? Yes they are. They are in a way pre-brainwashed by their leaders so using just the right rhetoric you can get them to act as a block and get them to do your bidding. They also have a nice property that they congregate in large megachurches, you really just have to convince the pastor to preach your agenda, and you instantly got thousands of voters. Here is an excerpt from the link: "President Bush made his famous comment that his favorite political philosopher was Jesus Christ because he changes your heart, I was a little bit surprised by that. Surprised, because presidential candidates usually do not make specific sectarian references to their beliefs. …" Note, Bush Jr wasn't the only one who realized and exploited the potential. The AIPAC (Pro Israel Lobby) is also using Evangelicals. http://www.aipac.org/connect/communities/yourchurch http://www.aipac.org/connect/communities/yourchurch ^ The strategy is pretty clear. Identify pastors of megachurges and cater to them. Here is an excerpt from AIPAC's mission page: "Pastors and other significant community leaders have amplified their voices by inviting elected officials to speak about the U.S.-Israel relationship in church, organizing parlor meetings with members of Congress to lobby them on pro-Israel legislation and participating in AIPAC’s annual Policy Conference." I have seen the effect first hand, it was very effective. An elderly relative was a member in one of those churches. Maybe 20-15 years ago they couldn't show you where Middle East was on the map. And all of the sudden within 5 years they somehow started talking about supporting the state Isreal and their house filled with trinkets built by settlers as "thank you"s from thousands in donations she sent over there and so on. It was a bit baffling, at first. Then I watched one the sermons by her pastor once (she had a recording) and it become clear what's happening.
  - damagedcake 11y ago
    Evangelicals aren't any easier to brainwash than so called "Progressives," Libertarians, White people, Asian people, Athiests, Republicans, or any human being categorized by any social group, demographic or other criteria you want to pull out. That said, just like all human beings they can sometimes be deceived, blinded by bias or just not put enough thought into their beliefs. 'Because, you know, we're human just like you and everyone else here.
bko 11y ago
> no systematic evidence that cash transfer programs discourage work 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.
damagedcake 11y ago
Just because there's "no systematic evidence that cash transfer programs discourage work" doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Speaking from personal experience there is a whole branch of my family (and it's spread over 3 generations now) that lives off of gaming the welfare system (and suing people...that's how they get money...oh and one is an illegal alient). Note that I am not saying we should abolish welfare or even that the problem is widespread, but that the problem is real.
tsotha 11y ago
Whenever I see a NYT headline that starts "The Myth of...", I know whatever they're pooh-poohing is true.
eivarv 11y ago
I thought it was already widely known that this was a myth – it's not like it was ever backed by a substantial amount of research, or even a particularly convincing argument. It also has the typical characteristics of demagoguery.

95 points by __Joker 11y ago

The cash assistance programs being cited were carried out in poor countries, from what I can tell. Maybe that works in a country where you never have enough. I'm not sure the results apply here to the United States. I could not disagree more with the title, based on my own observations. I mean, aren't most of the people in this country poor because of mental illness or addiction?

rayiner 11y ago
What? No. 15% of the population is at or below the poverty line. Very few of them have ment illness or addiction. Most are simply born into circumstances with little opportunity (urban or rural), and don't have the exceptional qualities needed to break out of those trajectories.
- michaelbuddy 11y ago
  People who aren't exceptional work and save money all the time. Working jobs doesn't require exceptional people. Also do you know the 'poverty' line isn't exactly the line where you're happy or sad. Many people are there and afford all necessities.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Working jobs doesn't require exceptional people. Lifting yourself out of poverty by working jobs often does.
chongli 11y ago
I mean, aren't most of the people in this country poor because of mental illness or addiction? No! They're poor because their parents were poor or because they grew up in a poor neighbourhood and lacked access to a proper education. This article highlights one egregious myth but far more pernicious is the one you just highlighted: that poverty is a personal or moral failing rather than a lack of opportunity. It's really simple: people are poor because they don't have enough money. Don't let yourself fall into the Just-World Fallacy.
- merpnderp 11y ago
  "lacked access to a proper education". How does that explain Washington DC with the highest levels of funding per child in the country? Every kid has access to a well funded school with well paid teachers. I think it's easier to defend the claim that the kids lacked guidance and support to take advantage of the education provided for them. In the US a single mom who homeschools, with only a high school education, will have her child place in the top 70% of public school kids. Parental involvement is so important, it's the only factor that matters.
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    Difficult to be involved if you both work 40+ hours a week doing physically demanding jobs.
    - merpnderp 11y ago
      And yet tens of millions of people do it every year in the US. It's all about priorities.
  - msbarnett 11y ago
    > lacked access to a proper education". How does that explain Washington DC with the highest levels of funding per child in the country? Every kid has access to a well funded school with well paid teachers. Education funding in the US is wildly uneven. Spend some time visiting inner-city schools. They are not even remotely "well-funded". Property-tax driven school funding formulas ensure that richer areas have much, much better funded schools than poor areas.
    - rayiner 11y ago
      Inner city public schools are some of the most well-funded in the county. Washington DC is almost entirely "inner city" public schools (I.e. Almost all the student population is low income) and has the highest per student spending. The wealthy suburb of DC where I grew up spends $13,500 per student per year. That's a lot less than DC or Baltimore or Chicago, all of which have 70-85% low-income students, and only moderately more than Philadelphia, which is also almost all "inner city" schools.
IkmoIkmo 11y ago
Tons of studies have been done for the last few decades and they show a pretty solid consensus (not completely unanimous but it's pretty strong) that wealth and success in this country are very largely hereditary, that socioeconomic mobility is pretty flat (and very flat relative to other developed economies except maybe the UK) and that the American dream (rags to riches for anyone who works hard, i.e. social mobility based on merit and effort) is a myth. So no, if you're poor in the US it's not just because you've got a mental illness, that's a very wrong view of the world. Poverty is a big issue in the US and it is distinct from many (not all) developed economies for having a lot of working poverty, i.e. people who are not ill, do not suffer substance abuse, who aren't homeless and who have a job (often multiple) and yet are poor. That is very much an American phenomenon, no other developed country has so many normal people who have jobs and yet are poor and who struggle to leave their children a better life than they enjoyed.

err4nt 11y ago

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 friends on welfare had every system and every game. I would wonder why my lunch had an apple in place of their Fruit Rollups and Cookies. One kid even got a pack of starbursts in his lunch every single day, if I was lucky, he would share or trade one with me. Now that Im an adult I can see that my parents priorty with their limited finances were GOOD food, GOOD clothes, and the necessities we needed for success. I kind of wonder how many kids that grew up on welfare are packing Fruit Rollups in their kids lunches today, how many welfare kids walk around with iPhones when lower middle class families cant afford it, etc. It has been my observation in Canada that what seems to work with cash assistance is a cushion to break your fall, not an IV dripping just-enough to not have to work. Where I lived you also had to prove you were applying for work to stay on it, but if you got a minimum-wage full-time job you would lose your welfare but not have as much money, so of course everybody's parents applied as often as they needed to, only went to work when they absolely needed to, and quit as soon as they possibly could to regain or keep the welfare status. And of course they modelled this to their kids. So I do think welfare can totally short circuit personal success, Ive seen many lives reduced to manipulating a aystem instead of becoming something beneficial to others. Its sad but I believe its human nature No matter how much assistance you provide, it cant be so much that it disincentivizes you from rejoining the work force without facing a 'penalty'.

crdoconnor 11y ago
>Ive seen many lives reduced to manipulating a aystem instead of becoming something beneficial to others Well, it ought to prepare them for a life dealing with corporate politics in that case.
snickerdoodles 11y ago
Yep - we have signs to not feed the animals, or they become dependent on us for food...

xacaxulu 11y ago

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 of research into this. http://www.cato.org/blog/how-welfare-state-traps-poor-dependency-british-version http://www.cato.org/blog/how-welfare-state-traps-poor-depend...

JupiterMoon 11y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10446982 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10446982
websocketpuppet 11y ago
This shows the gaming of the US Welfare system and the inherent disincentives to work. http://www.salon.com/2010/03/16/hipsters_food_stamps_pinched/ http://www.salon.com/2010/03/16/hipsters_food_stamps_pinched...
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  https://www.jacobinmag.com/2011/01/hipsters-food-stamps-and-the-politics-of-resentment/ https://www.jacobinmag.com/2011/01/hipsters-food-stamps-and-...
  - thatusertwo 11y ago
    Here in Ontario, Canada, whenever the teacher go on strike everyone else gets up in arms, the reality is that the teachers are one of the few areas of employment that still have good wages and benefits. Instead of saying we need to bring everyone down to the lowest level we should be asking for everyone to be pulled up to the level of teachers. Note: Unlike other places, teaching is a great job in Ontario.
- lostcolony 11y ago

tonomics 11y ago

>Many governments have economic advisers with degrees from the United States who share the same ideology He's right, but the ideology is social democracy, not free market capitalism

abalone 11y ago
Hey guess what? Silicon Valley is a product of massive amounts of government funding too. DARPA's budget is about $3B this year alone. You can thank Uncle Sam for autonomous vehicles, Siri and the Internet, to pick just three. So if investing taxes in people isn't "free market capitalism" then neither is the tech industry.
- orangecat 11y ago
  DARPA's budget is about $3B this year alone. Compared to $10 billion in R&D for Microsoft and Intel and $8 billion for Google: http://fortune.com/2014/11/17/top-10-research-development/ http://fortune.com/2014/11/17/top-10-research-development/
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Pretty much all of that money comes from selling stuff they are only able to sell because of previous government R&D. For example, without the government leaning heavily on integrated circuits in the 60s, would Microsoft and Google even exist today?
  - abalone 11y ago
    ...in late stage development which is MUCH less risky. Super risky early stage tech development mostly happens in the public sector at taxpayer expense through government agencies like DARPA.
    - zo1 11y ago
      A lot of things are easier when it happens with other people's money. A lot of those projects didn't necessarily have the expectation to make/turn a profit.

JupiterMoon 11y ago

> 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.

tonomics 11y ago
Same could be said about NY Times
- ydhdjpwpdj 11y ago
  Or even you.
- kaonashi 11y ago
  Apples & right-wing think tanks.
dublinclontarf 11y ago
As opposd to the publishers of THIS report?
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  Of course. Everyone has an agenda. Examples in this field are: (1) minimise the tax burden for their donors (2) minimise poverty (3) to grab as much funding as possible. There are many more. What is interesting about the results (which include peer reviewed studies - the one in mentioned by the NYT doesn't seem to be peer reviewed) suggesting that cash handouts are more efficient than than more complicated welfare programs is that the cash handouts would eliminate the middle man and maximise the bang for buck of helping people in poverty. I.E. minimising the size of the charity or the government bureaucracy.
bigforbritches 11y ago
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 hope that they will understand & internalize your case for welfare. You can back it up with scores of studies that have data stretching multiple decades. You can provide touching anecdotes that tug at the heart strings. You can do all that and yet people will not have a change of heart for more than a fleeting moment. I will give you an account of how workaday people - sensible people - really think about welfare and handouts in general. For this, I will stick to America & Americans although this could easily be extrapolated to other parts of the world. I strongly believe that most non-welfare dependent ( & even most welfare-resenting ) Americans are like me. For this purpose let me also exclude the portion of the population that are impetuously dismissive of the "freeloaders" and "deadbeats". Including them would not be helpful here. Having said that I think most sensible Americans are fine with some form of "public assistance" ( lump into this whatever forms of unearned perks, benefits, allowances, tax breaks, subsidies etc that the government lavishes on the low income or even some middle income people ) for those people who have fallen on hard times. Most sensible Americans are also fine with those same forms of "public assistance" being bestowed upon those same sections of the public for even extended durations of their lifetimes. I think sensible Americans get that the ill effects of an impoverished childhood & other social curses can stretch for the better part of a generation, if not more. What most sensible Americans won't stand for is when those benefits are still lavished on those sections of the society even when those previously disenfranchised people are now, well, no longer beggared. Take the case of San Francisco. It is not uncommon to find yourself dining at a restaurant where your fellow diners constitute a good chunk of these previously beggared classes. You think ,"good for them." It is not uncommon to find them shopping at upmarket home furnishing stores. You think,"hmm...okay..they share my taste in rugs." It is also not uncommon to find them gushingly sharing photos & videos of their fantastic vacations to Iceland or Namibia. You think, "I wish I could take a month away from work. Well, perhaps next year." It is not uncommon to find your kids struggle to stuff their applications to the same top tier colleges as these previously beggared classes who are suddenly competing with your flock, to be one among the lucky 6% or 7% that constitute the incoming class at a Yale, Columbia or Harvard. Now you think, "screw all these welfare programs for deadbeats and moochers." That's what it all boils down to. Everyone's fine with handouts until it starts to get too close to home. Your entitlements end where my feelings of hurt begin. We can differ on the degree & scale but that's the general sentiment of most sensible workaday Americans.

projectileboy 11y ago

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 subcontract work out to nearly every congressional district in the land (see the B-2 as an example).

snarfy 11y ago
The amount paid to corporate subsidies is pretty obscene: http://imgur.com/ttNcwHA http://imgur.com/ttNcwHA
- solomatov 11y ago
  Are you sure that all these corporate subsidies are that bad? Do you have information of breakdown of the target of subsidies by companies? For example, Tesla receive about 5b$ of government subsidies. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-20150531-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-2015... This, I think, is investment which really worth it, it's the most innovative automotive company in the world, and it would be impossible without this.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Nitpick: the $4.9 billion figure is for Tesla, SpaceX, and SolarCity combined.
- solomatov 11y ago
  Also, the sum $4000 sounds too round for me, especially taking into account, that other numbers provided doesn't contain so many zeroes in them.
- solomatov 11y ago
  Actually I opened the source: http://www.commondreams.org/views/2013/09/23/add-it-average-american-family-pays-6000-year-subsidies-big-business http://www.commondreams.org/views/2013/09/23/add-it-average-... Here're their largest points: 1. $1268 - for overpriced medications 2. $1231 - for revenue loss from tax havens 3. $870 - for corporate tax subsidies All of them are very questionable.

sageikosa 11y ago

So why not charity? Why must helping the poor be a government function?

Futurebot 11y ago
That's because it doesn't work on a large scale. It especially doesn't work during periods of crisis: http://www.democracyjournal.org/32/the-voluntarism-fantasy.php?page=all http://www.democracyjournal.org/32/the-voluntarism-fantasy.p... http://articles.latimes.com/2014/mar/30/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20140330 http://articles.latimes.com/2014/mar/30/business/la-fi-hiltz... http://www.salon.com/2009/03/16/turse/ http://www.salon.com/2009/03/16/turse/

PythonicAlpha 11y ago

Given, there is a corrupting influence of undeserved money on people ... Something similar would be interesting to know (but I guess, will never be researched): How corrupting is the influence of state-money poured into many industries of western nations, because those states want to support their own big industries (like military industry, energy, ...) and are lobbied into doing so ... the result: Money goes on and on into the same corporations, but small companies get nothing.

nraynaud 11y ago

I come from a country where the thinking is that people gets minimal helps for the government in exchange for them not voting for the nazis, like the Germans did (that's the shorter, but I think it's fair). Every country has its story and point of view on welfare. I just hope they don't go too American here, because I have not been employed in the last 3 years.

tremols 11y ago

I think that either the author got it wrong, or its just cheap socialist propaganda. Corruption is not about buying alcohol and tobacco or avoiding work, it is about becoming dependent on nanny estate to a point of: a) blindly supporting the populist politicians even if they are corrupt. b) ignoring the consequences of unsustainable public spending like debt and inflation. (Again, while corrupt bankers and bureaucrats become richer creating a greater inequality).

kaa2102 11y ago

Corporate welfare has a corrupting influence on democracy and capital markets.

akallio9000 11y ago

Just the photo alone made me facepalm. Why buy a riding lawn mower for five times the price of a basic push mower that would easily mow a trailer park lawn in 10 - 15 minutes?

maxerickson 11y ago
It's not relevant to your point about the mower, but people do often put trailers on a couple of acres.
baobabaobab 11y ago
You're looking at a piece of equipment that can be used to generate income, maybe that's what it's for. It also could have been cheap/broken/free, and they intend to flip it.

jorge-fundido 11y ago

When I was growing up and mom on welfare (80's & 90's), there was a disincentive to work harder: the more income earned, the less the subsidy at roughly a dollar per dollar. I believe that poverty is not seen as a problem by our nation's leaders but instead an opportunity to exploit & control the masses.

caseysoftware 11y ago

Money in politics corrupts! Money in the financial markets is evil! Money in health care taints decision making! But money going to poor people? Nah, there are no downsides at all. If money encourages bad behavior and poor decision making, then it shouldn't apply in all of these situations? Or alternatively, maybe it's not the money at all but the people themselves?

ethagknight 11y ago

Wait, confused how Bush brainwashed and manipulated evangelicals? The linked article discusses the Bush whitehouse reaching out to constituents. Are evangelicals really easy to brainwash?

rdtsc 11y ago
> Are evangelicals really easy to brainwash? Yes they are. They are in a way pre-brainwashed by their leaders so using just the right rhetoric you can get them to act as a block and get them to do your bidding. They also have a nice property that they congregate in large megachurches, you really just have to convince the pastor to preach your agenda, and you instantly got thousands of voters. Here is an excerpt from the link: "President Bush made his famous comment that his favorite political philosopher was Jesus Christ because he changes your heart, I was a little bit surprised by that. Surprised, because presidential candidates usually do not make specific sectarian references to their beliefs. …" Note, Bush Jr wasn't the only one who realized and exploited the potential. The AIPAC (Pro Israel Lobby) is also using Evangelicals. http://www.aipac.org/connect/communities/yourchurch http://www.aipac.org/connect/communities/yourchurch ^ The strategy is pretty clear. Identify pastors of megachurges and cater to them. Here is an excerpt from AIPAC's mission page: "Pastors and other significant community leaders have amplified their voices by inviting elected officials to speak about the U.S.-Israel relationship in church, organizing parlor meetings with members of Congress to lobby them on pro-Israel legislation and participating in AIPAC’s annual Policy Conference." I have seen the effect first hand, it was very effective. An elderly relative was a member in one of those churches. Maybe 20-15 years ago they couldn't show you where Middle East was on the map. And all of the sudden within 5 years they somehow started talking about supporting the state Isreal and their house filled with trinkets built by settlers as "thank you"s from thousands in donations she sent over there and so on. It was a bit baffling, at first. Then I watched one the sermons by her pastor once (she had a recording) and it become clear what's happening.
- damagedcake 11y ago
  Evangelicals aren't any easier to brainwash than so called "Progressives," Libertarians, White people, Asian people, Athiests, Republicans, or any human being categorized by any social group, demographic or other criteria you want to pull out. That said, just like all human beings they can sometimes be deceived, blinded by bias or just not put enough thought into their beliefs. 'Because, you know, we're human just like you and everyone else here.

bko 11y ago

> no systematic evidence that cash transfer programs discourage work 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.

damagedcake 11y ago

Just because there's "no systematic evidence that cash transfer programs discourage work" doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Speaking from personal experience there is a whole branch of my family (and it's spread over 3 generations now) that lives off of gaming the welfare system (and suing people...that's how they get money...oh and one is an illegal alient). Note that I am not saying we should abolish welfare or even that the problem is widespread, but that the problem is real.

tsotha 11y ago

Whenever I see a NYT headline that starts "The Myth of...", I know whatever they're pooh-poohing is true.

eivarv 11y ago

I thought it was already widely known that this was a myth – it's not like it was ever backed by a substantial amount of research, or even a particularly convincing argument. It also has the typical characteristics of demagoguery.