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> And now please explain: why is it better for those places if some people stay poor? I suspect it’s not so much a matter of being poor, but allowing the possi

> And now please explain: why is it better for those places if some people stay poor? I suspect it’s not so much a matter of being poor, but allowing the possibility of being poor. If you do not have the freedom to fail, then you also have less opportunity to succeed. For example, a government retirement program keeps the elderly off the street… but it also takes a percentage of their earnings while working. For many that might be the difference between being able to buy a house this year vs. waiting a couple more, or between starting a business and working for their current employer, between jumping on a good financial opportunity and missing it. It also forces people to choose retirement over investing 100% into their children. This isn’t an argument to abolish social security, but an example of how eliminating the possibility of failure limits opportunities for success. The key here is I think people are better judges of their financial situation than the government. If we had to solve economics problems with a computer I wouldn’t choose a mainframe with one set of rules for everything. I’d choose millions of distributed processors that were each able to evaluate their own situation and that could fail without taking down the whole system. So, what happens when social security fails and nobody had retirement income? That’s the kind of problem that small scale poverty helps avoid. Otherwise we have a communal tendency to kick the can down the road until the problem becomes insurmountable.

Timon3 3y ago
> I suspect it’s not so much a matter of being poor, but allowing the possibility of being poor. > If you do not have the freedom to fail, then you also have less opportunity to succeed. Interesting hypothesis. I have a counter-hypothesis: it is not good if people can die due to poor choices. It's not good if they can get so poor they can't escape and improve their lives. It's not good if wealth is concentrated, because this leads to worse quality of life for most people. On the contrary: you have to give people an opportunity to improve if you want them to improve, and the only way to do this is to support them so they aren't destined to stay poor. All of these observations seem to be both obvious and historically grounded. Do you have any counter-arguments beyond your initial hypothesis? > So, what happens when social security fails and nobody had retirement income? That’s the kind of problem that small scale poverty helps avoid. Otherwise we have a communal tendency to kick the can down the road until the problem becomes insurmountable. Then why are there so many more poor people in the US compared to the EU? Shouldn't the US need a smaller amount of poverty for their system to function well? Why does reality not seem to line up with your hypothesis?

Timon3 3y ago

> I suspect it’s not so much a matter of being poor, but allowing the possibility of being poor. > If you do not have the freedom to fail, then you also have less opportunity to succeed. Interesting hypothesis. I have a counter-hypothesis: it is not good if people can die due to poor choices. It's not good if they can get so poor they can't escape and improve their lives. It's not good if wealth is concentrated, because this leads to worse quality of life for most people. On the contrary: you have to give people an opportunity to improve if you want them to improve, and the only way to do this is to support them so they aren't destined to stay poor. All of these observations seem to be both obvious and historically grounded. Do you have any counter-arguments beyond your initial hypothesis? > So, what happens when social security fails and nobody had retirement income? That’s the kind of problem that small scale poverty helps avoid. Otherwise we have a communal tendency to kick the can down the road until the problem becomes insurmountable. Then why are there so many more poor people in the US compared to the EU? Shouldn't the US need a smaller amount of poverty for their system to function well? Why does reality not seem to line up with your hypothesis?