5 ms·

This is generally how socialist govt programs work. Give money to the rich and advertise it as helping the poor.

by Day1 5y ago

wdh505 5y ago
"trickle down economics" for general economic policy, and straight bribing the rich to act well during social programs. The problem is "a fool and their money are soon parted", and the rich don't stay rich by parting with their money easily. I don't see an easy answer.
lijogdfljk 5y ago
Conversely, it also seems to be how capitalist designs work. I ask: What designs actually help the working class?
- voisin 5y ago
  Universal Basic Income.
  - Cloudef 5y ago
    UBI has the potential to shift the cost of ubi into everything else, then you are back to the starting point
    - asdff 5y ago
      This is not very great logic. People try and argue the same about minimum wage and it falls in its face, because economists who practice critical thinking note that when minimum wage has been raised historically, inflation generally did not follow.
      - tastyfreeze 5y ago
        After reading about the history and impact of minimum wages it is a policy that I vehemently oppose. Minimum wage started in most places as a way to price a group of workers out of the market so some other group could keep their jobs at the pay they liked. Additionally, minimum wage fails to deliver on its promise of helping low income groups. It makes less jobs available to low skill workers making it more difficult to acquire skills that would increase the pay they could demand. Finally, as with any price fixing scheme a black market arises. This would be cash under the table type jobs. What is wrong with two people agreeing on a price for some work that is below what some far away bean counter thinks is acceptable?
        trasz 5y ago
        I wonder what exactly you’ve been reading or get to this conclusion.
        tastyfreeze 5y ago
        A few years ago I would have wondered the same thing. After reading Basic Economic by Thomas Sowell I searched for more information to counter the book's claims on minimum wage. In the end I came to the conclusion that Sowell is right. Minimum wage is a net negative in society. Minimum wage is harmful to the low income groups the policy is supposed to help. Example of job protection origins: https://www.forbes.com/sites/carriesheffield/2014/04/29/on-the-historically-racist-motivations-behind-minimum-wage/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/carriesheffield/2014/04/29/on-t... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis%E2%80%93Bacon_Act_of_1931?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis%E2%80%93Bacon_Act_of_193... https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/bls/bls_0467_1928.pdf https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/bls/bl... Australia protecting jobs from Chinese workers pg 17 British Columbia protecting jobs from "Asiatics" pg 68 South Africa protecting jobs from "colored" workers pg 74
    - voisin 5y ago
      Index it to inflation. Increase taxes on the rich to pay for it. Replace a ton of other costly-to-administer social programs too.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- Cloudef 5y ago
  All designs help those in power
- e4e78a06 5y ago
  None, because you can't get around markets even if you try to regulate them out of existence. As seen in the article countries with good unemployment benefits also have higher rates of unemployment during normal times. And don't forget every job being outsourced to China/Vietnam/Africa. If you confiscated all of Jeff Bezos' net worth you'd get something like $1000 for each American, once. The way to help the working class is to ensure economic growth happens, because a rising tide lifts all boats.
  - piva00 5y ago
    > The way to help the working class is to ensure economic growth happens, because a rising tide lifts all boats. This is just trickle down economics. The same catchphrase as "grow the pie to share it". It simply fuels money to the rich as well, in a larger proportion than to workers. We are actually experiencing the results of 40 years of that ideology and it doesn't look pretty. Growth is also looking like a very unsustainable way to support civilization.
    - e4e78a06 5y ago
      We haven't had real economic growth in the US since the 70's when deindustrialization first began. If you discount by the real estate market's return instead of CPI you have negative or flat real growth. CPI includes a lot of goods that are long run deflationary like TVs, food, and cars. I'd point you to China for an example of what "rising tide lifts all boats" actually looks like. And to add to that - it matters a lot what kind of growth is driving GDP increases. If you're just powering growth by increasing immigration (aka working population) that's not increasing per-capita GDP. > Growth is also looking like a very unsustainable way to support civilization. Again, depends what kind of growth you're talking about. > "grow the pie to share it" Wealth redistribution has never worked in history. In every case where it has occurred there has been a flight of capital leading to underinvestment and poverty, or war.
      - dgb23 5y ago
        > Wealth redistribution has never worked in history. In every case where it has occurred there has been a flight of capital leading to underinvestment and poverty, or war. What do you classify as wealth redistribution?
- brimble 5y ago
  Democratic socialism seems to be the label for the best mix of elements we've founds so far. "Capitalism" doesn't mean "anything to do with markets", and tells you exactly who it's for right there in the name. Capitalism vs. not letting free markets exist to any substantial degree, is a false choice. Relying on that label as if approaches that aren't at least pretty close to what the US does are all diametrically opposed to capitalism and necessarily share nothing with it, is a way to end up arguing over things that aren't real and don't matter.
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  War (taking place somewhere else, that you're winning)
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    That seems like a zero sum game. For you to be winning there has to be an similar working class somewhere that is losing.
    - spywaregorilla 5y ago
      Outside the problem definition
      - munk-a 5y ago
        And that's how we end up with refugee crises. (amongst a plethora of other moral, ethical and humanitarian issues)
        spywaregorilla 5y ago
        Nobody denying that
- tamaharbor 5y ago
  Available jobs with no unemployment recourse.
JohnWhigham 5y ago
Please enlighten us what proud plan that is brazenly American would you have enacted to keep the country from collapsing when everything was closing?
- president 5y ago
  Maybe we shouldn't have closed down the economy which was the reason why these programs existed in the first place.
- commandlinefan 5y ago
  Well, the best option at the time would have been to not lock down at all and just carry on as usual: lockdowns appear to have had almost no effect on Covid deaths (https://sites.krieger.jhu.edu/iae/files/2022/01/A-Literature-Review-and-Meta-Analysis-of-the-Effects-of-Lockdowns-on-COVID-19-Mortality.pdf https://sites.krieger.jhu.edu/iae/files/2022/01/A-Literature...)
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    Even if that is an accurate assessment, the l goal if lockdown s was not only to stop people from getting sick, but to them from getting sick all at once & overloading the healthcare system in ways that would have caused more deaths. Getting the same number if people infected over a longer period of time is a useful tactic.
  - moistly 5y ago
    > keep the country from collapsing Unless you have odd ideas about healthcare and hospitals, I think you overlooked a key part of OP’s question. Have you forgotten the horror that went down in NYC, Italy, etc? Hospitals were overwhelmed, patients piled up all over the place, the dead packed into refrigerated trucks, staff working endless hours, equipment shortages… and you suggest not locking down would have been the better course of action?! Wow.
    - TheGigaChad 5y ago
Aeolun 5y ago
Only beat by non-socialist government programmes, which give money to the rich and advertise it as such.
- munk-a 5y ago
  While all the while dangling that "And won't this program be awesome when you're one of the rich ones?" cookie in front of everyone. "Sure I might be poor now, but I am fully against any sort of wealth or inheritance taxes because it harms my fantasy that I'll be living on a private island by the time I die." We give money to the rich and advertise it to the rich and hopefully temporarily poor.
dang 5y ago
Please don't post generic ideological comments to HN. They make discussion more predictable and therefore more tedious. Also, they evoke pushback from people with opposite passions, and the result is usually nasty and boring. We're trying for something different here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=generic%20ideolog%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

This is generally how socialist govt programs work. Give money to the rich and advertise it as helping the poor.

by Day1 5y ago

This is generally how socialist govt programs work. Give money to the rich and advertise it as helping the poor.

"trickle down economics" for general economic policy, and straight bribing the rich to act well during social programs. The problem is "a fool and their money are soon parted", and the rich don't stay rich by parting with their money easily. I don't see an easy answer.

lijogdfljk 5y ago

Conversely, it also seems to be how capitalist designs work. I ask: What designs actually help the working class?

voisin 5y ago
Universal Basic Income.
- Cloudef 5y ago
  UBI has the potential to shift the cost of ubi into everything else, then you are back to the starting point
  - asdff 5y ago
    This is not very great logic. People try and argue the same about minimum wage and it falls in its face, because economists who practice critical thinking note that when minimum wage has been raised historically, inflation generally did not follow.
    - tastyfreeze 5y ago
      After reading about the history and impact of minimum wages it is a policy that I vehemently oppose. Minimum wage started in most places as a way to price a group of workers out of the market so some other group could keep their jobs at the pay they liked. Additionally, minimum wage fails to deliver on its promise of helping low income groups. It makes less jobs available to low skill workers making it more difficult to acquire skills that would increase the pay they could demand. Finally, as with any price fixing scheme a black market arises. This would be cash under the table type jobs. What is wrong with two people agreeing on a price for some work that is below what some far away bean counter thinks is acceptable?
      - trasz 5y ago
        I wonder what exactly you’ve been reading or get to this conclusion.
        tastyfreeze 5y ago
        A few years ago I would have wondered the same thing. After reading Basic Economic by Thomas Sowell I searched for more information to counter the book's claims on minimum wage. In the end I came to the conclusion that Sowell is right. Minimum wage is a net negative in society. Minimum wage is harmful to the low income groups the policy is supposed to help. Example of job protection origins: https://www.forbes.com/sites/carriesheffield/2014/04/29/on-the-historically-racist-motivations-behind-minimum-wage/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/carriesheffield/2014/04/29/on-t... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis%E2%80%93Bacon_Act_of_1931?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis%E2%80%93Bacon_Act_of_193... https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/bls/bls_0467_1928.pdf https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/bls/bl... Australia protecting jobs from Chinese workers pg 17 British Columbia protecting jobs from "Asiatics" pg 68 South Africa protecting jobs from "colored" workers pg 74
  - voisin 5y ago
    Index it to inflation. Increase taxes on the rich to pay for it. Replace a ton of other costly-to-administer social programs too.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Cloudef 5y ago
All designs help those in power
e4e78a06 5y ago
None, because you can't get around markets even if you try to regulate them out of existence. As seen in the article countries with good unemployment benefits also have higher rates of unemployment during normal times. And don't forget every job being outsourced to China/Vietnam/Africa. If you confiscated all of Jeff Bezos' net worth you'd get something like $1000 for each American, once. The way to help the working class is to ensure economic growth happens, because a rising tide lifts all boats.
- piva00 5y ago
  > The way to help the working class is to ensure economic growth happens, because a rising tide lifts all boats. This is just trickle down economics. The same catchphrase as "grow the pie to share it". It simply fuels money to the rich as well, in a larger proportion than to workers. We are actually experiencing the results of 40 years of that ideology and it doesn't look pretty. Growth is also looking like a very unsustainable way to support civilization.
  - e4e78a06 5y ago
    We haven't had real economic growth in the US since the 70's when deindustrialization first began. If you discount by the real estate market's return instead of CPI you have negative or flat real growth. CPI includes a lot of goods that are long run deflationary like TVs, food, and cars. I'd point you to China for an example of what "rising tide lifts all boats" actually looks like. And to add to that - it matters a lot what kind of growth is driving GDP increases. If you're just powering growth by increasing immigration (aka working population) that's not increasing per-capita GDP. > Growth is also looking like a very unsustainable way to support civilization. Again, depends what kind of growth you're talking about. > "grow the pie to share it" Wealth redistribution has never worked in history. In every case where it has occurred there has been a flight of capital leading to underinvestment and poverty, or war.
    - dgb23 5y ago
      > Wealth redistribution has never worked in history. In every case where it has occurred there has been a flight of capital leading to underinvestment and poverty, or war. What do you classify as wealth redistribution?
brimble 5y ago
Democratic socialism seems to be the label for the best mix of elements we've founds so far. "Capitalism" doesn't mean "anything to do with markets", and tells you exactly who it's for right there in the name. Capitalism vs. not letting free markets exist to any substantial degree, is a false choice. Relying on that label as if approaches that aren't at least pretty close to what the US does are all diametrically opposed to capitalism and necessarily share nothing with it, is a way to end up arguing over things that aren't real and don't matter.
spywaregorilla 5y ago
War (taking place somewhere else, that you're winning)
- Aeolun 5y ago
  That seems like a zero sum game. For you to be winning there has to be an similar working class somewhere that is losing.
  - spywaregorilla 5y ago
    Outside the problem definition
    - munk-a 5y ago
      And that's how we end up with refugee crises. (amongst a plethora of other moral, ethical and humanitarian issues)
      - spywaregorilla 5y ago
        Nobody denying that
tamaharbor 5y ago
Available jobs with no unemployment recourse.

JohnWhigham 5y ago

Please enlighten us what proud plan that is brazenly American would you have enacted to keep the country from collapsing when everything was closing?

president 5y ago
Maybe we shouldn't have closed down the economy which was the reason why these programs existed in the first place.
commandlinefan 5y ago
Well, the best option at the time would have been to not lock down at all and just carry on as usual: lockdowns appear to have had almost no effect on Covid deaths (https://sites.krieger.jhu.edu/iae/files/2022/01/A-Literature-Review-and-Meta-Analysis-of-the-Effects-of-Lockdowns-on-COVID-19-Mortality.pdf https://sites.krieger.jhu.edu/iae/files/2022/01/A-Literature...)
- ineedasername 5y ago
  Even if that is an accurate assessment, the l goal if lockdown s was not only to stop people from getting sick, but to them from getting sick all at once & overloading the healthcare system in ways that would have caused more deaths. Getting the same number if people infected over a longer period of time is a useful tactic.
- moistly 5y ago
  > keep the country from collapsing Unless you have odd ideas about healthcare and hospitals, I think you overlooked a key part of OP’s question. Have you forgotten the horror that went down in NYC, Italy, etc? Hospitals were overwhelmed, patients piled up all over the place, the dead packed into refrigerated trucks, staff working endless hours, equipment shortages… and you suggest not locking down would have been the better course of action?! Wow.
  - TheGigaChad 5y ago

Aeolun 5y ago

Only beat by non-socialist government programmes, which give money to the rich and advertise it as such.

munk-a 5y ago
While all the while dangling that "And won't this program be awesome when you're one of the rich ones?" cookie in front of everyone. "Sure I might be poor now, but I am fully against any sort of wealth or inheritance taxes because it harms my fantasy that I'll be living on a private island by the time I die." We give money to the rich and advertise it to the rich and hopefully temporarily poor.

dang 5y ago

Please don't post generic ideological comments to HN. They make discussion more predictable and therefore more tedious. Also, they evoke pushback from people with opposite passions, and the result is usually nasty and boring. We're trying for something different here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=generic%20ideolog%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...