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> Higher taxes and government provided safety nets are less biased than charities. They also incentivize problematic behavior. When there's no chance in hell t

> Higher taxes and government provided safety nets are less biased than charities. They also incentivize problematic behavior. When there's no chance in hell that you won't get the money, you have little incentive to change your ways to become a productive member of society. Moral hazards are a thing.

alexilliamson 6y ago
Citation? I believe this is a pretty active and contested area of research, so I'm a little skeptical of the problematic behaviors that you claim are incentivized.
- luckylion 6y ago
  I invite you to come over for a coffee and meet my neighbors. When you're okay with what you get for free, there's no compelling reason to expend energy other than moral duty. When you remove that duty by turning non-participation into a right, you get a group of people who will rely on it. Not all will, obviously. Some actually need the safety net (e.g. disabled people), others fall into it and then get up again. It's the ones who don't want to get up again that are the issue.
myvoiceismypass 6y ago
I take offense to your assertion that people that rely on safety nets are not “productive members of society”.
- luckylion 6y ago
  If you're not producing anything, you're not productive. They're still members of society, but they're not contributing. I'd rather have them return to contributing than pretending that, if we didn't have people who are lazy, we'd invent them.
  - jlokier 6y ago
    So, someone who nurses a relative in need 24x7 is "not contributing"? Those carers are often entirely dependent on safety nets. That is far from lazy! It's an exhausting thing to do.
    - luckylion 6y ago
      That's not who I was talking about, and it's not a large part of those who perpetually rely on benefits. It's also not common, we've generally got that solved in Europe.
      - jlokier 6y ago
        I'm in Europe too. It's not solved, and it's very common indeed. At any time there are millions of unpaid carers. For many of them full-time work is completely infeasible, and for many others part-time work is infeasible as well. Heck, for some even getting out to the shops is difficult, as how do you go out if you need to stay with your cared for person all the time. Maybe you'd consider it solved if you count the benefits on which so many carers rely; certainly not without them. Even then, I find it striking that benefits for carers where I live are lower than benefits for an unemployed person. As though a carer needs less to live on.
yongjik 6y ago
Au contraire, when your life is on the edge all the time, people have every incentive to cling to whatever they have, and never change, because you have one mistake or accident and your life is screwed. Case in point: USA has a very well-developed bankruptcy system. Losing a business frequently means your business debts are absolved and you can start anew. One may think that such a system will encourage people to throw money at bad decisions: however, a bigger effect is that people are encouraged to cut the loss at a reasonable point and start a new business, because you can take calculated risks. There are (or used to be) arcane economic systems based upon the reverse principle: if your business fails your life is ruined, so you have every incentive to stick to it until the bitter end, using up every resource, including your personal money, your family money, and your relatives' money. (South Korea used to be like that.) And guess what? It didn't bring more successful businesses, just more suffering.
- luckylion 6y ago
  You appear to misunderstand me. I'm not saying "remove all safety nets", I like safety nets for the exact reason you stated, they allow some amount of risk, they cover you when extraordinary events happen, and allow you to get back up instead of falling endlessly. They're not all positive though, they are incentivizing a part of the population to not contribute. I live around such people, and I have no doubt that they'd contribute if the alternative was going hungry and sleeping outside. But since the alternative is a 70sqm flat, a tv, xbox and smartphone, utilities paid for and food in the kitchen, they don't see a reason to contribute - it would just mean spending time doing things they don't like for more money. But as they already have their needs and most of their desires covered, that's not a good offer to them. They're perpetually relying on the safety net, and it tends to become intergenerational. If you want to install a safety net, it's wise to address that issue.

alexilliamson 6y ago

Citation? I believe this is a pretty active and contested area of research, so I'm a little skeptical of the problematic behaviors that you claim are incentivized.

luckylion 6y ago
I invite you to come over for a coffee and meet my neighbors. When you're okay with what you get for free, there's no compelling reason to expend energy other than moral duty. When you remove that duty by turning non-participation into a right, you get a group of people who will rely on it. Not all will, obviously. Some actually need the safety net (e.g. disabled people), others fall into it and then get up again. It's the ones who don't want to get up again that are the issue.

myvoiceismypass 6y ago

I take offense to your assertion that people that rely on safety nets are not “productive members of society”.

luckylion 6y ago
If you're not producing anything, you're not productive. They're still members of society, but they're not contributing. I'd rather have them return to contributing than pretending that, if we didn't have people who are lazy, we'd invent them.
- jlokier 6y ago
  So, someone who nurses a relative in need 24x7 is "not contributing"? Those carers are often entirely dependent on safety nets. That is far from lazy! It's an exhausting thing to do.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    That's not who I was talking about, and it's not a large part of those who perpetually rely on benefits. It's also not common, we've generally got that solved in Europe.
    - jlokier 6y ago
      I'm in Europe too. It's not solved, and it's very common indeed. At any time there are millions of unpaid carers. For many of them full-time work is completely infeasible, and for many others part-time work is infeasible as well. Heck, for some even getting out to the shops is difficult, as how do you go out if you need to stay with your cared for person all the time. Maybe you'd consider it solved if you count the benefits on which so many carers rely; certainly not without them. Even then, I find it striking that benefits for carers where I live are lower than benefits for an unemployed person. As though a carer needs less to live on.

yongjik 6y ago

Au contraire, when your life is on the edge all the time, people have every incentive to cling to whatever they have, and never change, because you have one mistake or accident and your life is screwed. Case in point: USA has a very well-developed bankruptcy system. Losing a business frequently means your business debts are absolved and you can start anew. One may think that such a system will encourage people to throw money at bad decisions: however, a bigger effect is that people are encouraged to cut the loss at a reasonable point and start a new business, because you can take calculated risks. There are (or used to be) arcane economic systems based upon the reverse principle: if your business fails your life is ruined, so you have every incentive to stick to it until the bitter end, using up every resource, including your personal money, your family money, and your relatives' money. (South Korea used to be like that.) And guess what? It didn't bring more successful businesses, just more suffering.

luckylion 6y ago
You appear to misunderstand me. I'm not saying "remove all safety nets", I like safety nets for the exact reason you stated, they allow some amount of risk, they cover you when extraordinary events happen, and allow you to get back up instead of falling endlessly. They're not all positive though, they are incentivizing a part of the population to not contribute. I live around such people, and I have no doubt that they'd contribute if the alternative was going hungry and sleeping outside. But since the alternative is a 70sqm flat, a tv, xbox and smartphone, utilities paid for and food in the kitchen, they don't see a reason to contribute - it would just mean spending time doing things they don't like for more money. But as they already have their needs and most of their desires covered, that's not a good offer to them. They're perpetually relying on the safety net, and it tends to become intergenerational. If you want to install a safety net, it's wise to address that issue.