5 ms·

If you can show people that yes this intervention will help the poorest but it will help you more then those concerned mostly with their own relative status mig

If you can show people that yes this intervention will help the poorest but it will help you more then those concerned mostly with their own relative status might be more likely to back it. Folks have been trying this. When the poorest folks have enough money to spend on things, everyone tends to benefit - it isn't a new theory. But mostly, teaching folks this has failed. It is either that, or you need to settle on "people simply dislike giving others help, even if they reap rewards." I think part of the issue is that the rewards aren't nearly as visible or shockingly impactful as actually being given money to thrive.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
The general trend of history seems to suggest this isn't true. Why do you think it is? I mostly see propaganda and lies directed at stopping this from happening rather than a basic human response to it. Like say the 'welfare queen' myth, or the trope that 'giving people money will just cause them problems or make them lazy', seems you have to really stretch to convince people that helping the poor is a bad idea and the standard human response is to help.
- rayiner 4y ago
  > Like say the 'welfare queen' myth, or the trope that 'giving people money will just cause them problems or make them lazy', seems you have to really stretch to convince people that helping the poor is a bad idea and the standard human response is to help. In my experience, these attitudes are more common among those who live around poor people than among those who don't. It's my wife who taught me the difference between "people who are good at being poor and ones who aren't." Coming from a privileged background, I had no idea. It's a sociocultural adaptation to scarcity. Historically, whether you were in a Bangladeshi village or rural Oregon, even the rich don't really have sufficient surplus to help more than a few people. And there were no rich foreigners or central government to swoop in. In that scenario, anticipating and expecting help is maladaptive. Everybody in the village needs to be incentivized to work as hard as possible for themselves before relying on anyone else.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    When did rural Oregon find out that there was in fact several layers of central government available to help them? Didn't they feel a bit foolish at that point? It's great that they were all working so hard in grinding poverty and just letting the weak die or whatever, very inspirational, but being vaguely aware of reality might have served them better overall. The New Deal agriculture subsidies must have really confused them if they didn't even know about the state government. https://www.oregonhistoryproject.org/narratives/the-world-rushed-in-northeastern-oregon/cities-and-work/hard-times-and-the-new-deal/ https://www.oregonhistoryproject.org/narratives/the-world-ru... Hopefully they can ditch those unhelpful socioeconomic adaptations they picked up now they've rejoined society.
  - throwaway0a5e 4y ago
    >In my experience, these attitudes are more common among those who live around poor people than among those who don't It shouldn't exactly come as a shock that the people who have to live in proximity to the results of such systems have more to say about the downsides than those who can just observe from their ivory tower and can look at some spreadsheet, do a little math and say things like "net positive" with a clear conscience. Even if you have very good results the former group is simply going to be much more aware of the tradeoffs than the latter who will at best only know second hand.
    - asdff 4y ago
      The former group is also only reporting anecdotal experiences charged in emotion and isn't exactly performing a rigorous observational study.
      - throwaway0a5e 4y ago
        Anecdotal experience, torturing preferred conclusions out of the data. Potato, potahto
        asdff 4y ago
belorn 4y ago
It not that simple. The same theory say that government should spend more money during recessions since that send more money into the hands of citizens, thus increasing peoples ability to consume more and drive up the economy. However, by doing so the amount of money in the system increase and thus you get inflation, forcing the government to spend even more money. This doesn't happen every time as is demonstrated by this study, but history has plenty of example where it has and hasn't worked. The open question is to figure out when it work and why it doesn't work in other situations.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Jochim 4y ago
  The cause of the inflation matters in how the response plays out. The inflation we're seeing currently isn't being driven by the general population having too much money but the response by central banks has been to act like it is. Personally I view the two major factors to be post pandemic shipping costs and the Ukraine. A meaningful response from government could have headed this off but instead we're seeing energy producers hit record profits while large parts of society are going to be unable turn their heating on over the winter and on top of that rising interest rates are going to see every other aspect of their budget become even more expensive as well.
  - belorn 4y ago
    There are multiple studies and theories being put out on why inflation occur, both now and in the past. I don't really see a major consensus on a single explanation. The two major one that seems to make most sense to me is "net importing vs net exporter", and the other is the theory about low supply. For the first one, if a country is importing more than exporting, then the imports is being paid over time by the exports. Increasing the amount of money in such country does nothing since its the exported products that pay for the imports, not the currency. The second theory is that in periods where demand exceed that of supply. In those situation people will bid to buy the limited resource, and if you increase the amount of money circulating then the bids will simply go up for the same limited resource. Natural gas is being used as an example in Europe, where the only way to reduce inflation is to reduce consumption. Reduced consumption however slows economic growth and thus a conflict between inflation and growth.
obastani 4y ago
One important caveat is that in the study, as far as I can tell, the money is coming from a different country (presumably the USA) than the target country (Kenya), so there is a baseline effect of increasing the net wealth of Kenya. If the money is collected from and distributed to the same community, the results may not necessarily be the same. I think it would be very interesting to see a study along these lines, but I’m not sure how feasible it would be.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Which is key - a system that had money injected into it showed the results expected of increasing the money supply. The same may not happen on a national scale if you’re circulating inside it.
  - asdff 4y ago
    I think it would. There exists at least two economic systems in a country, the capital economy and the productive economy. The capital economy represents assets and wealth that aren't involved in day to day things. Inflated property values, portfolios of gold holdings, etc. The productive economy is the one where most people participate in with daily life. Its' the $7 you hand to a worker to transmute into a sandwich. The $80 a wage earner gets paid over a shift that is mostly parted out to things like groceries and rent. Universal income promises to tax the capital economy and shift that money into the productive economy. In effect, you are taking gold that previously was sitting idle underneath the sleeping dragon and returning it to the village, increasing the real productive money supply by taking money that's just being sat upon and using it for real productive use.
jchanimal 4y ago
They might dislike rational helping because they see their own place in the economic game as irrationally hampered, and under conditions of perceived injustice, would rather get their own before extending access to others.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

The general trend of history seems to suggest this isn't true. Why do you think it is? I mostly see propaganda and lies directed at stopping this from happening rather than a basic human response to it. Like say the 'welfare queen' myth, or the trope that 'giving people money will just cause them problems or make them lazy', seems you have to really stretch to convince people that helping the poor is a bad idea and the standard human response is to help.

rayiner 4y ago
> Like say the 'welfare queen' myth, or the trope that 'giving people money will just cause them problems or make them lazy', seems you have to really stretch to convince people that helping the poor is a bad idea and the standard human response is to help. In my experience, these attitudes are more common among those who live around poor people than among those who don't. It's my wife who taught me the difference between "people who are good at being poor and ones who aren't." Coming from a privileged background, I had no idea. It's a sociocultural adaptation to scarcity. Historically, whether you were in a Bangladeshi village or rural Oregon, even the rich don't really have sufficient surplus to help more than a few people. And there were no rich foreigners or central government to swoop in. In that scenario, anticipating and expecting help is maladaptive. Everybody in the village needs to be incentivized to work as hard as possible for themselves before relying on anyone else.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  When did rural Oregon find out that there was in fact several layers of central government available to help them? Didn't they feel a bit foolish at that point? It's great that they were all working so hard in grinding poverty and just letting the weak die or whatever, very inspirational, but being vaguely aware of reality might have served them better overall. The New Deal agriculture subsidies must have really confused them if they didn't even know about the state government. https://www.oregonhistoryproject.org/narratives/the-world-rushed-in-northeastern-oregon/cities-and-work/hard-times-and-the-new-deal/ https://www.oregonhistoryproject.org/narratives/the-world-ru... Hopefully they can ditch those unhelpful socioeconomic adaptations they picked up now they've rejoined society.
- throwaway0a5e 4y ago
  >In my experience, these attitudes are more common among those who live around poor people than among those who don't It shouldn't exactly come as a shock that the people who have to live in proximity to the results of such systems have more to say about the downsides than those who can just observe from their ivory tower and can look at some spreadsheet, do a little math and say things like "net positive" with a clear conscience. Even if you have very good results the former group is simply going to be much more aware of the tradeoffs than the latter who will at best only know second hand.
  - asdff 4y ago
    The former group is also only reporting anecdotal experiences charged in emotion and isn't exactly performing a rigorous observational study.
    - throwaway0a5e 4y ago
      Anecdotal experience, torturing preferred conclusions out of the data. Potato, potahto
      - asdff 4y ago

belorn 4y ago

It not that simple. The same theory say that government should spend more money during recessions since that send more money into the hands of citizens, thus increasing peoples ability to consume more and drive up the economy. However, by doing so the amount of money in the system increase and thus you get inflation, forcing the government to spend even more money. This doesn't happen every time as is demonstrated by this study, but history has plenty of example where it has and hasn't worked. The open question is to figure out when it work and why it doesn't work in other situations.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Jochim 4y ago
The cause of the inflation matters in how the response plays out. The inflation we're seeing currently isn't being driven by the general population having too much money but the response by central banks has been to act like it is. Personally I view the two major factors to be post pandemic shipping costs and the Ukraine. A meaningful response from government could have headed this off but instead we're seeing energy producers hit record profits while large parts of society are going to be unable turn their heating on over the winter and on top of that rising interest rates are going to see every other aspect of their budget become even more expensive as well.
- belorn 4y ago
  There are multiple studies and theories being put out on why inflation occur, both now and in the past. I don't really see a major consensus on a single explanation. The two major one that seems to make most sense to me is "net importing vs net exporter", and the other is the theory about low supply. For the first one, if a country is importing more than exporting, then the imports is being paid over time by the exports. Increasing the amount of money in such country does nothing since its the exported products that pay for the imports, not the currency. The second theory is that in periods where demand exceed that of supply. In those situation people will bid to buy the limited resource, and if you increase the amount of money circulating then the bids will simply go up for the same limited resource. Natural gas is being used as an example in Europe, where the only way to reduce inflation is to reduce consumption. Reduced consumption however slows economic growth and thus a conflict between inflation and growth.

obastani 4y ago

One important caveat is that in the study, as far as I can tell, the money is coming from a different country (presumably the USA) than the target country (Kenya), so there is a baseline effect of increasing the net wealth of Kenya. If the money is collected from and distributed to the same community, the results may not necessarily be the same. I think it would be very interesting to see a study along these lines, but I’m not sure how feasible it would be.

bombcar 4y ago
Which is key - a system that had money injected into it showed the results expected of increasing the money supply. The same may not happen on a national scale if you’re circulating inside it.
- asdff 4y ago
  I think it would. There exists at least two economic systems in a country, the capital economy and the productive economy. The capital economy represents assets and wealth that aren't involved in day to day things. Inflated property values, portfolios of gold holdings, etc. The productive economy is the one where most people participate in with daily life. Its' the $7 you hand to a worker to transmute into a sandwich. The $80 a wage earner gets paid over a shift that is mostly parted out to things like groceries and rent. Universal income promises to tax the capital economy and shift that money into the productive economy. In effect, you are taking gold that previously was sitting idle underneath the sleeping dragon and returning it to the village, increasing the real productive money supply by taking money that's just being sat upon and using it for real productive use.

jchanimal 4y ago

They might dislike rational helping because they see their own place in the economic game as irrationally hampered, and under conditions of perceived injustice, would rather get their own before extending access to others.