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The whole article could have been shortened to this one paragraph: In the early 1970s, a large-scale study gave poor people in four cities a so-called "negativ

The whole article could have been shortened to this one paragraph: In the early 1970s, a large-scale study gave poor people in four cities a so-called "negative income tax," a no-strings-attached payment based on how little money they made. The conclusion: the aid tended to discourage work. Yeah, that's right. The obvious occurred, as usual. All such theories, and all such fawning articles, rely upon one unalterable precondition: Nobody involved has actually lived among the destitute, while destitute.

fortes 19y ago
Actually, that's the opposite of what the article is arguing (or to be more accurate, what the guy who the article is about is arguing). Direct quote: Reducing the number of economic hardships that the poor have to deal with actually make them more, not less, likely to work, just as repairing most of the dents on a car makes the owner more likely to fix the last couple on his own. Simply giving the poor money with no strings attached, rather than using it, as federal and state governments do now, to try to encourage specific behaviors - food stamps to make sure money doesn't get spent on drugs or non-necessities, education grants to encourage schooling, time limits on benefits to encourage recipients to look for work - would be just as effective, and with far less bureaucracy. What you quoted was a common rebuttal to the argument above, which the guy in the article counters with: Karelis responds that the data from that experiment is in fact quite ambiguous, and there has been debate among economists over how to interpret the results. But ultimately, he believes, the strength of his arguments is less in how they fit with the economic work that's been done to date on poverty - much of which he is suspicious of anyway - but in how familiar they feel to all of us, rich or poor. * Edit: Formatted quotes, thought I could use Markdown.
- mynameishere 19y ago
  that's the opposite of what the article is arguing Exactly. If I wanted to summarize the argument of the article I would translate from newspeak to English: We want to pay right-thinking, liberal arts majors middle class salaries for them to administer money distributions from functional people to dysfunctional people. We have no data to suggest this will help anyone, but we are pretty sure it will help ourselves.
  - crux_ 19y ago
    Right-o, to read between the lines here: "Dysfunctional" people are poor because they deserve it, because they are dysfunctional and have not earned anything. "Functional" people are wealthy because they are functional and have earned their wealth. Let's take a look at a time in one's life before anything can be earned or deserved: At birth, does one newborn somehow deserve better education, improved nutrition, and a life that will offer far more opportunities and fewer hardships than some other child? No, of course not: By your own ethos, you only deserve what you have earned. There is no way to make a moral argument that newborns deserve anything other than equal circumstances to begin to create a life for themselves. (Unless you are the sort who believes you chose your parents well and deserve the just rewards of that choice....) Even for the Ayn-Rand libertarian there's a pretty compelling case to be made for widespread welfare efforts: not for the poor, who may have earned their own hardships, but for their children who will suffer without having done a thing to deserve it.
    - mynameishere 19y ago
      Strawman. Sufficiently so that I won't comment further than to say that I was translating what I perceive them to believe--"them" being the class of people who thrive on dysfunctional populations.
      - keating 19y ago
        crux_ makes a very strong argument that deserves to be addressed rather than dismissed without comment.
        mynameishere 19y ago
        Well, crux_ misrepresented my views, and that's that. But fine: At birth, does one newborn somehow deserve better education, improved nutrition, and a life that will offer far more opportunities and fewer hardships than some other child? In fact, parents are responsible for their own children. I am not responsible for other people's children. That is a hard, cold fact. The only way to force equality is just that: To force it. People who are careful with their finances, with their vocations, with their reproductive activity inevitably wind up supporting other people's children. Think what you will about that. To me, it is disgustingly criminal.
phaedrus 19y ago
You've taken one small part of the article - the part that has the least to do with any of the rest of it, and which was given by the author as a counterpoint, not a supporting point - and tried to pass it off as the crux of the whole article. Shame on you.
ashu 19y ago
You are right in that the article (or the mentioned book) does not provide any evidence at all for the radical suggestions being made. In fact, counter-evidence is discarded with a very strange "it was ambigous" hand-wave. Although, I am unwilling to believe that people who have never been destitute cannot come up with a solution - it's harder, but saying that it is impossible is like saying we just don't have imagination. [Edit: no-idea why you are being heavily down-modded. I had that knee-jerk reaction when I first read your response (probably because I tend to go leftist), but when I actually read the article in detail, yours is a very valid response.]
- jacobolus 19y ago
  He’s being downmodded because the article most certainly can’t be summarized like that. He is summarily rejecting its whole argument, with a flip remark that adds little to the discussion.

fortes 19y ago

Actually, that's the opposite of what the article is arguing (or to be more accurate, what the guy who the article is about is arguing). Direct quote: Reducing the number of economic hardships that the poor have to deal with actually make them more, not less, likely to work, just as repairing most of the dents on a car makes the owner more likely to fix the last couple on his own. Simply giving the poor money with no strings attached, rather than using it, as federal and state governments do now, to try to encourage specific behaviors - food stamps to make sure money doesn't get spent on drugs or non-necessities, education grants to encourage schooling, time limits on benefits to encourage recipients to look for work - would be just as effective, and with far less bureaucracy. What you quoted was a common rebuttal to the argument above, which the guy in the article counters with: Karelis responds that the data from that experiment is in fact quite ambiguous, and there has been debate among economists over how to interpret the results. But ultimately, he believes, the strength of his arguments is less in how they fit with the economic work that's been done to date on poverty - much of which he is suspicious of anyway - but in how familiar they feel to all of us, rich or poor. * Edit: Formatted quotes, thought I could use Markdown.

mynameishere 19y ago
that's the opposite of what the article is arguing Exactly. If I wanted to summarize the argument of the article I would translate from newspeak to English: We want to pay right-thinking, liberal arts majors middle class salaries for them to administer money distributions from functional people to dysfunctional people. We have no data to suggest this will help anyone, but we are pretty sure it will help ourselves.
- crux_ 19y ago
  Right-o, to read between the lines here: "Dysfunctional" people are poor because they deserve it, because they are dysfunctional and have not earned anything. "Functional" people are wealthy because they are functional and have earned their wealth. Let's take a look at a time in one's life before anything can be earned or deserved: At birth, does one newborn somehow deserve better education, improved nutrition, and a life that will offer far more opportunities and fewer hardships than some other child? No, of course not: By your own ethos, you only deserve what you have earned. There is no way to make a moral argument that newborns deserve anything other than equal circumstances to begin to create a life for themselves. (Unless you are the sort who believes you chose your parents well and deserve the just rewards of that choice....) Even for the Ayn-Rand libertarian there's a pretty compelling case to be made for widespread welfare efforts: not for the poor, who may have earned their own hardships, but for their children who will suffer without having done a thing to deserve it.
  - mynameishere 19y ago
    Strawman. Sufficiently so that I won't comment further than to say that I was translating what I perceive them to believe--"them" being the class of people who thrive on dysfunctional populations.
    - keating 19y ago
      crux_ makes a very strong argument that deserves to be addressed rather than dismissed without comment.
      - mynameishere 19y ago
        Well, crux_ misrepresented my views, and that's that. But fine: At birth, does one newborn somehow deserve better education, improved nutrition, and a life that will offer far more opportunities and fewer hardships than some other child? In fact, parents are responsible for their own children. I am not responsible for other people's children. That is a hard, cold fact. The only way to force equality is just that: To force it. People who are careful with their finances, with their vocations, with their reproductive activity inevitably wind up supporting other people's children. Think what you will about that. To me, it is disgustingly criminal.

phaedrus 19y ago

You've taken one small part of the article - the part that has the least to do with any of the rest of it, and which was given by the author as a counterpoint, not a supporting point - and tried to pass it off as the crux of the whole article. Shame on you.

ashu 19y ago

You are right in that the article (or the mentioned book) does not provide any evidence at all for the radical suggestions being made. In fact, counter-evidence is discarded with a very strange "it was ambigous" hand-wave. Although, I am unwilling to believe that people who have never been destitute cannot come up with a solution - it's harder, but saying that it is impossible is like saying we just don't have imagination. [Edit: no-idea why you are being heavily down-modded. I had that knee-jerk reaction when I first read your response (probably because I tend to go leftist), but when I actually read the article in detail, yours is a very valid response.]

jacobolus 19y ago
He’s being downmodded because the article most certainly can’t be summarized like that. He is summarily rejecting its whole argument, with a flip remark that adds little to the discussion.