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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: Reducin
by 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 agothat'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 agoRight-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 agoStrawman. 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 agocrux_ makes a very strong argument that deserves to be addressed rather than dismissed without comment.
- mynameishere 19y agoWell, 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.
- abstractbill 19y agoIn fact, parents are responsible for their own children. I am not responsible for other people's children. That is a hard, cold fact. That doesn't sound like a "cold, hard fact" to me. It sounds like an opinion on the best way to structure responsibility within a society. Do you believe you have any responsibilities at all, to society at large? If so, why do you specifically exclude children?
- mynameishere 19y agoDo you believe you have any responsibilities at all, to society at large? Yes: To not force others to raise my children.