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> The Cato Institute is a public policy research organization — a think tank – dedicated to the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free marke

> 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.
- rdtsc 11y ago
  Except it is not that simple. People have opinions about welfare without even interacting with individuals taking advantage of it. Have you directly stopped and talked to those people buying rugs? Or at a restaurant? Are you sure they are not just hipster kids wearing second-hand clothes but who might work at Google or have a rich daddy with a trust fund?. Maybe you did, but I doubt it. So a lot of opinions and "feels" people have about welfare is what they are _told_ to have. By their parents, teacher, media, friends, TV, magazines, movies, etc. I lived with a conservative family for many years, and I was of firm opionion that welfare queens are everywhere wasting pulblic's money and that's where all out taxes were. It was a very sincere and string opionion. But it was put in not head not my socializing with "welfare queens" but by White Middle Class Americans, who also didn't really socialize much with welfare recipients, but instead listened to Fox News all day every day. So to make story short, it is about the "feels" but the feels are often easily updated/manipulated/used by whomever you let control your thought processes.
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    The OP's post when read carefully was actually a lot more nuanced than you give her credit for.
    - rdtsc 11y ago
      Can you expand a bit on that?
      - JupiterMoon 11y ago
        > 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. This stuck out for me. I got the impression that she has mixed feelings about assistance programs but recognises their importance whilst wanting them to be applied fairly.
giardini 11y ago
Why the downvote? He's using irony/sarcasm!
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  I honestly don't mind the downvotes. Obviously libertarians would downvote. I did mind the bit where dang decided for whatever reason to move the whole thread from it's correct position.
  - zo1 11y ago
    I did so not because I'm a libertarian or an anarcho-capitalist to be more precise. I did so because you're flat out not adding anything to the conversation, as well as seemingly dismissing valid points because you dislike the political ideology that the publication is associated with. Either the ideas/points are valid, backed-up by evidence, etc. Or they're not.
    - JupiterMoon 11y ago
      Actually the OP had two points (and an agenda). Let's break them down. 1. I did well therefore why can't everyone be like me? This is rather tired argument that I have seen dismissed 3 times last week on HN alone. Refuting this is a waste of everyone's time hence I ignored it. 2. Here is a think tank publishing sponsored pseudo-science with a political agenda. This is what I commented on. In science, especially in controversial fields, the source of funding and acknowledgement of conflicting interests is almost as important as the findings for any given study. Not mentioning funding or conflicting interest is a viable grounds for withdrawal of peer reviewed publication. Your point: > Either the ideas/points are valid, backed-up by evidence, etc. Or they're not. Refer to my comment on the OP's point 2. To expand. Evidence can be selectively gathered and selectively presented. This is what peer review attempts to mitigate. A publication funded by a libertarian think-tank would (like a publication by a socialist think tank) face severe questions during peer review to try to determine whether there is bias. Neither TFA nor the stuff refereed to by the OP are (yet) citable research sources.
dang 11y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10446968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10446968 and marked it off-topic.
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  May I enquire why you censored me? I've noticed you doing this more and more with posts that don't agree with what I can only assume must be your point of view.
  - oldmanjay 11y ago
    you've redefined "censored" there. HN is pretty clear about discouraging unhelpful comments, and your comment was definitely not useful. you can assume HN readers are relatively intelligent and understand that a conservative think tank promotes conservative opinions. you can't assume we all accept that as normatively evil.
    - JupiterMoon 11y ago
      Sorry this took a while to post. (Dang has already censored me in another way after a regrettable spat some months ago -- I can only submit about 5 posts a day.) From wikipedia: > Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication or other information which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or inconvenient as determined by governments, media outlets, authorities or other groups or institutions. So no I used the word with it's correct meaning.
  - dang 11y ago
    It's not a question of your comment alone but of the whole subthread. Surprising digressions are often ok on HN, but predictable digressions are tedious and not in the spirit of the site. They are non-intellectual-curiosity-gratifying. Of these, predictable ideological digressions are certainly the worst and usually go downhill the fastest. All this holds regardless of the view being advocated.

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.

rdtsc 11y ago
Except it is not that simple. People have opinions about welfare without even interacting with individuals taking advantage of it. Have you directly stopped and talked to those people buying rugs? Or at a restaurant? Are you sure they are not just hipster kids wearing second-hand clothes but who might work at Google or have a rich daddy with a trust fund?. Maybe you did, but I doubt it. So a lot of opinions and "feels" people have about welfare is what they are _told_ to have. By their parents, teacher, media, friends, TV, magazines, movies, etc. I lived with a conservative family for many years, and I was of firm opionion that welfare queens are everywhere wasting pulblic's money and that's where all out taxes were. It was a very sincere and string opionion. But it was put in not head not my socializing with "welfare queens" but by White Middle Class Americans, who also didn't really socialize much with welfare recipients, but instead listened to Fox News all day every day. So to make story short, it is about the "feels" but the feels are often easily updated/manipulated/used by whomever you let control your thought processes.
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  The OP's post when read carefully was actually a lot more nuanced than you give her credit for.
  - rdtsc 11y ago
    Can you expand a bit on that?
    - JupiterMoon 11y ago
      > 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. This stuck out for me. I got the impression that she has mixed feelings about assistance programs but recognises their importance whilst wanting them to be applied fairly.

giardini 11y ago

Why the downvote? He's using irony/sarcasm!

JupiterMoon 11y ago
I honestly don't mind the downvotes. Obviously libertarians would downvote. I did mind the bit where dang decided for whatever reason to move the whole thread from it's correct position.
- zo1 11y ago
  I did so not because I'm a libertarian or an anarcho-capitalist to be more precise. I did so because you're flat out not adding anything to the conversation, as well as seemingly dismissing valid points because you dislike the political ideology that the publication is associated with. Either the ideas/points are valid, backed-up by evidence, etc. Or they're not.
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    Actually the OP had two points (and an agenda). Let's break them down. 1. I did well therefore why can't everyone be like me? This is rather tired argument that I have seen dismissed 3 times last week on HN alone. Refuting this is a waste of everyone's time hence I ignored it. 2. Here is a think tank publishing sponsored pseudo-science with a political agenda. This is what I commented on. In science, especially in controversial fields, the source of funding and acknowledgement of conflicting interests is almost as important as the findings for any given study. Not mentioning funding or conflicting interest is a viable grounds for withdrawal of peer reviewed publication. Your point: > Either the ideas/points are valid, backed-up by evidence, etc. Or they're not. Refer to my comment on the OP's point 2. To expand. Evidence can be selectively gathered and selectively presented. This is what peer review attempts to mitigate. A publication funded by a libertarian think-tank would (like a publication by a socialist think tank) face severe questions during peer review to try to determine whether there is bias. Neither TFA nor the stuff refereed to by the OP are (yet) citable research sources.

dang 11y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10446968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10446968 and marked it off-topic.

JupiterMoon 11y ago
May I enquire why you censored me? I've noticed you doing this more and more with posts that don't agree with what I can only assume must be your point of view.
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  you've redefined "censored" there. HN is pretty clear about discouraging unhelpful comments, and your comment was definitely not useful. you can assume HN readers are relatively intelligent and understand that a conservative think tank promotes conservative opinions. you can't assume we all accept that as normatively evil.
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    Sorry this took a while to post. (Dang has already censored me in another way after a regrettable spat some months ago -- I can only submit about 5 posts a day.) From wikipedia: > Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication or other information which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or inconvenient as determined by governments, media outlets, authorities or other groups or institutions. So no I used the word with it's correct meaning.
- dang 11y ago
  It's not a question of your comment alone but of the whole subthread. Surprising digressions are often ok on HN, but predictable digressions are tedious and not in the spirit of the site. They are non-intellectual-curiosity-gratifying. Of these, predictable ideological digressions are certainly the worst and usually go downhill the fastest. All this holds regardless of the view being advocated.