4 ms·
There's a weird chicken-and-egg quality to these arguments where the pro-state party wants to expand benefits, the anti-state party wants to limit them, and we
by mycologos 5y ago
There's a weird chicken-and-egg quality to these arguments where the pro-state party wants to expand benefits, the anti-state party wants to limit them, and we end up at this equilibrium where benefits are good enough for some people to cobble together lives based on them, but not good enough for most of those people to build better lives and get off them. I think it's overly simplistic to put all of the blame on one party (as a sibling comment about Democrats does).
- usrusr 5y agoI call that problem the how-much-vs-how: there's a permanent battle about the amount of transfer with exceptions and special cases pushed in from both sides at every opportunity, and result is continually worse incentives and complications like that effective tax rate problem at the thresholds of the receiver side.
- LordDragonfang 5y agoI think it's disingenuous to categorize the parties as "pro-" and "anti-" state, when the "anti-state" parties generally contain all the nationalists, supporters of the police state, and those who are willing to increase state military expenditures (and at least in the US's case, increasing government subsidies for their own constituents). It's pretty clear that "anti-state" in this context actually means opposition exclusively to policies that help the poor and hinder exploitation by the rich.