10 ms·

Anti-poverty programs should be unconditional

50 points by ojarow 3y ago

readthenotes1 3y ago
It seems very suspect to base anything on what happened during the pandemic. Even though no time is normal, those times were more abnormal than most
PopAlongKid 3y ago
>Instead, he proposed a “work bonus” plan that passed as the EITC in 1975, the first program to exclude the poorest Americans from government assistance by phasing in benefits alongside earned income. EITC was not initially designed as welfare, rather it was "supposed to be a temporary refundable tax credit for lower-income workers to offset the Social Security payroll tax and rising food and energy prices."[0] TFA misses the blindingly obvious "wrong way" of providing income to poverty-level residents, which is to implement it via the income tax system. This unfairly burdens the IRS with enforcement of rules that actually have little to do with income tax, and leads to such things as accusations of racist audits when in fact an EITC audit is a very different thing from, say, an audit of business income and expenses (an EITC audit usually has more to do with eligibility of, and who gets to claim, dependents).[1] [0]https://www.epi.org/publication/ib370-earned-income-tax-credit-and-the-child-tax-credit-history-purpose-goals-and-effectiveness/ https://www.epi.org/publication/ib370-earned-income-tax-cred... [1]It is true that some taxpayers try to cheat on self-employment (business) income to maximize their EITC (either by over-reporting or under-reporting net profit), but does not apply to wage earners.
- ToucanLoucan 3y ago
  And all that's not even going into things like the pandemic business loans that were handed out like fucking candy, many to businesses that barely even existed at the time, to the tune of hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars, most of which were entirely forgiven after the fact. But that's not socialism of course, that's not "financing bad decisions" and those people definitely 100% used all that money in their businesses and not for frivolous and unnecessary luxuries, so that's fine. The hypocrisy in all these issues is absolutely mind-boggling. If you're rich, getting free money from the Government is just business as usual. If you're not, it's the worst thing in human history and you deserve to die.
  - hellojesus 3y ago
    > And all that's not even going into things like the pandemic business loans that were handed out like fucking candy, many to businesses that barely even existed at the time, to the tune of hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars, most of which were entirely forgiven after the fact. It was a terrible system with malaligned incentives, but it was the government's attempt to not violate 5A. Had those loans not been handed out like candy, the gov would have violated 5A. You cannot seize private property for public good without just compensation. As it stands, I think many folks should sue the federal and state governments for 5A violations, especially if they did not receive true just compensation for the shutdowns.
    - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
      > It was a terrible system with malaligned incentives, but it was the government's attempt to not violate 5A. Is there a source for this? This seems incredibly shaky, basically saying that because of public health mandates, the government had to "repay" businesses for lost business/the inability to conduct business, which is just... not the same thing. Lost business is at best a nebulous "I might've made X" proposition, it's not nearly the same thing to, for example, say that the Government confiscated your truck which was worth $12,000 and should pay you as such. Like, I can see the logic but this seems like something that should be handled in court, not pre-empted by the feds this way.
      - hellojesus 3y ago
        Had the government done the proper thing of letting consumers decide for themselves if they wanted to keep going to bars or gyms, there would be no issue. Businesses would have lost customers naturally and folded due to a lack of revenue. But that's not what happened in the US. In many states, the state government forbade service businesses from operating and actively revoked licenses and/or fined businesses that tried to operate. [1] Why did they force businesses to close? To prevent covid transmission. That is definitionly done for the public good and is therefore subject to 5A. Here is the relevamt text from the ammendment: """ ... nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. """ A quick ddg search isn't turning anything up for ppp and 5th ammendment, but it's obvious it applies. [1] https://www.nj.com/news/2023/03/nj-gym-owners-who-defied-murphys-covid-rules-must-pay-124k-in-fines-court-rules.html https://www.nj.com/news/2023/03/nj-gym-owners-who-defied-mur...
- taxicabjesus 3y ago
  > EITC was not initially designed as welfare, rather it was "supposed to be a temporary refundable tax credit for lower-income workers to offset the Social Security payroll tax and rising food and energy prices."[0] Hah, that makes a lot of sense. The Social Security tax is suffocating for self-employed people at the bottom of the economic dogpile. 12.4% of your already-spent income is an impossible bill for low-income people to pay. I, of course, diligently tracked my income and paid all taxes due. But... if your income is 'off the books', it's easier to just not pay Uncle Sam than to put a target on your back by filing possibly-indefensible returns.
ToucanLoucan 3y ago
> Then, to the dismay of advocates and recipients alike, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) blocked the Democratic Party’s effort to make the expansion permanent, fearing, among other familiar concerns like the cost, that recipients would just buy drugs (the data shows that recipients spent the money on food, clothes, utilities, rent, and education). This just in: when you give people who chronically lack resources some resources, they by and large use them to better their circumstances. In other news, rain is wet and the sun will still be shining tomorrow. So much of this is so clearly and evidentially and objectively based on the sheer, raging, burning hatred this country has for poor people. We will let a hundred struggling families starve if it means preventing one lazy bastard from getting food he didn't "earn." Until we are ready to reckon with this pathological hatred of people who simply have less than us, we will never move forward as a society. The war on Poverty has nothing to do with fucking poverty, it is a war on poor people and it's the only one we've won lately.
- pierat 3y ago
  Yep, this boomer and silent gerontocracy is why we ended up with the biggest wealth transfer FROM younger generations to them. It's also how we got DARE garbage, of bandying around drugs to 6th graders and saying "doooont useeee theseeee", combined with lies like 'smoking a marijuanas will lead to your death!". (Massive kudos to Erowid, for debunking so much of these lies.) But it's unsurprising the biggest gerontocratic welfare program has old fucks with antiquated and completely garbage views of humans.
  - tharmas 3y ago
    The most egregious thing the Boomers did is they watered down the anti-monopoly laws. That was Bill Clinton's regime. I could be wrong on that, maybe it was Ronald Reagan's regime. Either way it was the Boomers. The enemy of the success of Capitalism is monopolies.
    - lapcat 3y ago
      > The most egregious thing the Boomers did is they watered down the anti-monopoly laws. That was Bill Clinton's regime. I could be wrong on that, maybe it was Ronald Reagan's regime. Either way it was the Boomers. Ronald Reagan was born in 1911, 35 years earlier than Bill Clinton, and turned 70 years old right after he took office in 1981.
datadrivenangel 3y ago
We're not fighting poverty, we're fighting poor people! Which is a very expensive war, so it might be cheaper to give some of that money to the poor people, so they can spend it more effectively.
- nvahalik 3y ago
  Yes, but _why_ are they poor? This is the thing that bothers me about this conversation more than anything. It's like giving pain killers to someone who has pain—in some cases that may be the only real solution but arguably the vast, VAST majority of the time, there is a basic desire to do the same thing repeatedly hoping for a different outcome. Giving money to people who aren't willing to change only perpetuates the problem. It's enabling them. Many people who were "formerly poor" will repeat the saying ad nauseam: poverty is a mindset. You can't "fix" poverty with money because money won't change their mind or their hearts. IME, only small embedded organizations are good at helping folks out of this cycle. Because they are small, they know the area, they know the people, they know the cycle and they actually help people get out of that cycle.
  - malfist 3y ago
    Given the conservative, punish the poor, attitude of your post, I really don't think you want to know why the poor are poor. I'll give you a hint, look at wealth distribution graphs
    - FredPret 3y ago
      I think lots of conservatives desperately want to help the poor, just not in ways that might seem kind & empathetic to you. Don’t confuse tough love with no love - many people simply don’t think welfare is going to actually help.
      - maedayx 3y ago
        But as we've seen time and again, those people are wrong. Giving people money helps, period. So either these people are simply ignoring facts, or they are not participating in good faith.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
hnbad 3y ago
Clearly the function of means checking is not to reduce costs as the process is expensive and the ROI compared to combatting tax fraud. Clearly the function of means checking is not to restrict access to only those in need as it often creates hoops to jump through that can be impenetrable for those who need it the most. So maybe the function of means checking is to do what it succeeds at doing, which is creating an "us" vs "them" distinction, to give even those scarcely outside the eligibility someone to look down on and accuse of fraud and being "welfare queens" and to maintain a negative attitude toward those in need while strengthening association with those on "your" side even if their financial situation is a thousand lifetimes removed from yours and poverty is only a bad month or health issue away.
LucienSchwab 3y ago
Poverty means you consume more than you produce. I assume poverty here is money-poverty. Poverty is relative. The implicit question is how to distribute resources to individuals according to how much good they provide to society. Good is the meaning of life, reproduction/sustainability and creation/development/infinitePonzi, really complex to estimate. We have invented money as an abstract representation of resources (food, clothes, energy, services, attention).
mathgradthrow 3y ago
My father and I fight about this a lot. His take is that if you give peiple money, they won't work, which will be bad. I understand his complaint, but the empirical evidence for it is that, when welfare was tied to having children, people apparently gamed the system by using less money on their kids than the welfare provided. This seems like it's probably most american's understanding of a welfare system, and my father is totally unwilling to consider that this problem of incentives can be remedied, though he is reasonably easy to convince of the value of giving employees negotiating power to quit their jobs and be able to survive. For me this is where the entire argument lies. A basic income (that does not depend on children) asserts the right to subsist without a job. Employment can offer you a better life, but it should not be able to offer you life itself. An employer that wields that carrot also wields that stick, and can exploit the difference to incredible social harm.
- hellojesus 3y ago
  [flagged]
- tenebrisalietum 3y ago
  > His take is that if you give peiple money, they won't work, which will be bad. There are a lot of people with money (high net-worth) that work (have some position in a company that they could get fired from), e.g. Jeff Bezos, many if not all CEOs, etc. So your father's take is either A) false, or B) what people with money are doing is not work, and is therefore bad.
  - gruez 3y ago
    >There are a lot of people with money (high net-worth) that work (have some position in a company that they could get fired from), e.g. Jeff Bezos, many if not all CEOs, etc. The exception doesn't prove the rule. Just because some really driven people are willing to be a CEO when they have far more money than they could ever need, doesn't mean that the average burger flipper is going to continue working at mcdonalds if his living expenses were fully paid by the government.
endisneigh 3y ago
If you give poor people money and they still had problems, then what? More money? There lies the problem. Children should not be poor, but how can you ensure accountability on the part of the parents?
- governmentdude 3y ago
  The money solves problems, if I'm interpreting the article correctly. We usually don't concern ourselves with accountability for other government spending (from corp tax breaks for R&D to FEMA shelters/tarps, and not forgetting the infinitely juicy supply contracts, big4 consulting fees). Why do you feel that poverty-relief is different to these other types of government spending? Why should it be held to a higher standard? What are your values?
  - endisneigh 3y ago
    When did I say it was different? There should be accountability there too.
    - governmentdude 3y ago
      > but how can you ensure accountability Right there is where you suggest that accountability MUST be 'ensured'. This is a very high accounting standard to set, much higher than normal for any federal programs that I'm aware of. I don't understand why you feel that a program that relieves a core ill of society (poverty) should waste no money. Anything that reduces poverty makes the rest of government services cheaper, as it so closely relates to crime. Is it that you don't trust the decision making of the individuals just because they're poor? If not, then what is it you expect?
      - endisneigh 3y ago
        How much money should be spent?
- enragedcacti 3y ago
atoav 3y ago
Everything that is wrong with the way most of the political class pretends to fight poverty can be traced back to one principle: Divide and Conquer Solving a problem is a very stupid idea if: - your wealth depends on not solving it - people keep voting for you to solve it Not to get too political, but this equally applies to politicans who have chosen "foreigners" as their issue. A former friend of mine who turned neo nazi once asked me in a discussion to give him one reason not to vote for $horrible_xenophobic_party. My reason was that they won't solve his problem with foreigners. The last time they had been in government the migration was higher than during the social democratic government before and after. If they would have solved it, they would have taken away the number one topic for which people keep voting them. They are interested in power, corruption and neoliberal economics, the foreigner schtick is just a vehicle to get there. With poverty it is very similar. Many political parties take poverty as a decoy to explain why the policy they wanted to do anyways will solve it. E.g. cutting social security or ramping up police funding. Actual policies that help have to do with taxing the rich more, giving poor people the access to education and solving basic needs so they can actually make use of that access etc. But yeah. Trickle down. Any minute now.
- shuntress 3y ago
  This is not directly related to your comment but the funny thing about the "trickle down" metaphor is that it actually makes a very strong case against Reaganomics. "Water", in the metaphor, is obviously money and as we all know water (for the most part) "trickles down" from places where there is less of it to places where there is more of it. The rich get richer. The poor stay poorer. Without regular and constant application of outside force in the form of regulation, taxation, redistribution of wealth, monopoly breakups, etc (in the metaphor, this is represented by the Sun) all wealth eventually pools in the few oceans and everywhere else is barren.
  - pandaman 3y ago
    It's funny because the "trickle down" metaphor has been made up by a Democrat humorist [1]. On the same note, why would you think it was made up for Republicans? 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics
gosub100 3y ago
Do economists share any culpability here? I thought their job was to apply their sharp minds and apply "systems" to achieve certain goals (not limited to addressing poverty). What if we compare it to other sciences? Say we didn't understand flight as well as we do, and we have this problem where planes keep crashing, maybe 2-3 a year (like it was in the 1980s-1990s) and instead of getting to the bottom of it and fixing the underlying problem, aerospace engineers and expert pilots just shrugged their shoulders, "whelp, that sucks.." and kept up the status quo? What if in the late '70s this new virus started spreading among gay men, and doctors just shrugged and said "well we can treat the symptoms and make our best guess how to avoid it, but damned if I know what's going on..."? How long would we keep awarding academic medals, increasing professors' salaries (and of course tuition), and lauding these doctors as heroes if they never advanced the state of their art? Why are economists shielded from a similar failure in their chosen profession?
- dfxm12 3y ago
  As the article suggests, the issue is with political policy. Economists don't implement political policy. Politicians do.
  - gosub100 3y ago
    So there's a theory/program that will end poverty (because the brilliant minds in economics thought of/simulated/tested it?) but politicians won't allow it to be implemented? I'm not implying anything with that question, please answer directly.
- wavemode 3y ago
  People often get this wrong. The goal of economics is not to fix economic systems, any more than the goal of psychology is to make the human mind perfect, or the goal of political science is to guarantee that your candidate wins every election. What these all have in common is they are merely descriptive sciences, not engineered solutions to specific problems. Understanding how something works currently, is not the same as having the tools to make it work better. To use a similar example to the one you gave - the common cold is one of the most common and well-studied illnesses known to man, but there is no vaccine for it. Lazy scientists? No, it's just that not every problem has an easy solution.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
deleted 3y ago
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debacle 3y ago
The EIC doesn't exist because of some Randian ethos at the heart of American politics, and I believe most Democrats and some Republicans are in favor of reform, but you actually have to pass a law to get reform, and unfortunately that has resulted for the last 20+ years in a complete breakdown of our system. I see our social safety net abused on a daily basis on my role, and I also am keenly aware that both parties use it as a campaigning tool, because single moms in the city working two jobs either receive too much, or too little government support, depending on who is campaigning for what. We really need to start making goal-focused policy decisions in the US, especially when it comes to social support and education. When I read about the justification for the strong social safety net in many parts of Europe, it doesn't sound like a socialist hellscape to me, it sounds like common sense.

50 points by ojarow 3y ago

It seems very suspect to base anything on what happened during the pandemic. Even though no time is normal, those times were more abnormal than most

PopAlongKid 3y ago

>Instead, he proposed a “work bonus” plan that passed as the EITC in 1975, the first program to exclude the poorest Americans from government assistance by phasing in benefits alongside earned income. EITC was not initially designed as welfare, rather it was "supposed to be a temporary refundable tax credit for lower-income workers to offset the Social Security payroll tax and rising food and energy prices."[0] TFA misses the blindingly obvious "wrong way" of providing income to poverty-level residents, which is to implement it via the income tax system. This unfairly burdens the IRS with enforcement of rules that actually have little to do with income tax, and leads to such things as accusations of racist audits when in fact an EITC audit is a very different thing from, say, an audit of business income and expenses (an EITC audit usually has more to do with eligibility of, and who gets to claim, dependents).[1] [0]https://www.epi.org/publication/ib370-earned-income-tax-credit-and-the-child-tax-credit-history-purpose-goals-and-effectiveness/ https://www.epi.org/publication/ib370-earned-income-tax-cred... [1]It is true that some taxpayers try to cheat on self-employment (business) income to maximize their EITC (either by over-reporting or under-reporting net profit), but does not apply to wage earners.

ToucanLoucan 3y ago
And all that's not even going into things like the pandemic business loans that were handed out like fucking candy, many to businesses that barely even existed at the time, to the tune of hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars, most of which were entirely forgiven after the fact. But that's not socialism of course, that's not "financing bad decisions" and those people definitely 100% used all that money in their businesses and not for frivolous and unnecessary luxuries, so that's fine. The hypocrisy in all these issues is absolutely mind-boggling. If you're rich, getting free money from the Government is just business as usual. If you're not, it's the worst thing in human history and you deserve to die.
- hellojesus 3y ago
  > And all that's not even going into things like the pandemic business loans that were handed out like fucking candy, many to businesses that barely even existed at the time, to the tune of hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars, most of which were entirely forgiven after the fact. It was a terrible system with malaligned incentives, but it was the government's attempt to not violate 5A. Had those loans not been handed out like candy, the gov would have violated 5A. You cannot seize private property for public good without just compensation. As it stands, I think many folks should sue the federal and state governments for 5A violations, especially if they did not receive true just compensation for the shutdowns.
  - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
    > It was a terrible system with malaligned incentives, but it was the government's attempt to not violate 5A. Is there a source for this? This seems incredibly shaky, basically saying that because of public health mandates, the government had to "repay" businesses for lost business/the inability to conduct business, which is just... not the same thing. Lost business is at best a nebulous "I might've made X" proposition, it's not nearly the same thing to, for example, say that the Government confiscated your truck which was worth $12,000 and should pay you as such. Like, I can see the logic but this seems like something that should be handled in court, not pre-empted by the feds this way.
    - hellojesus 3y ago
      Had the government done the proper thing of letting consumers decide for themselves if they wanted to keep going to bars or gyms, there would be no issue. Businesses would have lost customers naturally and folded due to a lack of revenue. But that's not what happened in the US. In many states, the state government forbade service businesses from operating and actively revoked licenses and/or fined businesses that tried to operate. [1] Why did they force businesses to close? To prevent covid transmission. That is definitionly done for the public good and is therefore subject to 5A. Here is the relevamt text from the ammendment: """ ... nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. """ A quick ddg search isn't turning anything up for ppp and 5th ammendment, but it's obvious it applies. [1] https://www.nj.com/news/2023/03/nj-gym-owners-who-defied-murphys-covid-rules-must-pay-124k-in-fines-court-rules.html https://www.nj.com/news/2023/03/nj-gym-owners-who-defied-mur...
taxicabjesus 3y ago
> EITC was not initially designed as welfare, rather it was "supposed to be a temporary refundable tax credit for lower-income workers to offset the Social Security payroll tax and rising food and energy prices."[0] Hah, that makes a lot of sense. The Social Security tax is suffocating for self-employed people at the bottom of the economic dogpile. 12.4% of your already-spent income is an impossible bill for low-income people to pay. I, of course, diligently tracked my income and paid all taxes due. But... if your income is 'off the books', it's easier to just not pay Uncle Sam than to put a target on your back by filing possibly-indefensible returns.

ToucanLoucan 3y ago

> Then, to the dismay of advocates and recipients alike, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) blocked the Democratic Party’s effort to make the expansion permanent, fearing, among other familiar concerns like the cost, that recipients would just buy drugs (the data shows that recipients spent the money on food, clothes, utilities, rent, and education). This just in: when you give people who chronically lack resources some resources, they by and large use them to better their circumstances. In other news, rain is wet and the sun will still be shining tomorrow. So much of this is so clearly and evidentially and objectively based on the sheer, raging, burning hatred this country has for poor people. We will let a hundred struggling families starve if it means preventing one lazy bastard from getting food he didn't "earn." Until we are ready to reckon with this pathological hatred of people who simply have less than us, we will never move forward as a society. The war on Poverty has nothing to do with fucking poverty, it is a war on poor people and it's the only one we've won lately.

pierat 3y ago
Yep, this boomer and silent gerontocracy is why we ended up with the biggest wealth transfer FROM younger generations to them. It's also how we got DARE garbage, of bandying around drugs to 6th graders and saying "doooont useeee theseeee", combined with lies like 'smoking a marijuanas will lead to your death!". (Massive kudos to Erowid, for debunking so much of these lies.) But it's unsurprising the biggest gerontocratic welfare program has old fucks with antiquated and completely garbage views of humans.
- tharmas 3y ago
  The most egregious thing the Boomers did is they watered down the anti-monopoly laws. That was Bill Clinton's regime. I could be wrong on that, maybe it was Ronald Reagan's regime. Either way it was the Boomers. The enemy of the success of Capitalism is monopolies.
  - lapcat 3y ago
    > The most egregious thing the Boomers did is they watered down the anti-monopoly laws. That was Bill Clinton's regime. I could be wrong on that, maybe it was Ronald Reagan's regime. Either way it was the Boomers. Ronald Reagan was born in 1911, 35 years earlier than Bill Clinton, and turned 70 years old right after he took office in 1981.

datadrivenangel 3y ago

We're not fighting poverty, we're fighting poor people! Which is a very expensive war, so it might be cheaper to give some of that money to the poor people, so they can spend it more effectively.

nvahalik 3y ago
Yes, but _why_ are they poor? This is the thing that bothers me about this conversation more than anything. It's like giving pain killers to someone who has pain—in some cases that may be the only real solution but arguably the vast, VAST majority of the time, there is a basic desire to do the same thing repeatedly hoping for a different outcome. Giving money to people who aren't willing to change only perpetuates the problem. It's enabling them. Many people who were "formerly poor" will repeat the saying ad nauseam: poverty is a mindset. You can't "fix" poverty with money because money won't change their mind or their hearts. IME, only small embedded organizations are good at helping folks out of this cycle. Because they are small, they know the area, they know the people, they know the cycle and they actually help people get out of that cycle.
- malfist 3y ago
  Given the conservative, punish the poor, attitude of your post, I really don't think you want to know why the poor are poor. I'll give you a hint, look at wealth distribution graphs
  - FredPret 3y ago
    I think lots of conservatives desperately want to help the poor, just not in ways that might seem kind & empathetic to you. Don’t confuse tough love with no love - many people simply don’t think welfare is going to actually help.
    - maedayx 3y ago
      But as we've seen time and again, those people are wrong. Giving people money helps, period. So either these people are simply ignoring facts, or they are not participating in good faith.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

hnbad 3y ago

Clearly the function of means checking is not to reduce costs as the process is expensive and the ROI compared to combatting tax fraud. Clearly the function of means checking is not to restrict access to only those in need as it often creates hoops to jump through that can be impenetrable for those who need it the most. So maybe the function of means checking is to do what it succeeds at doing, which is creating an "us" vs "them" distinction, to give even those scarcely outside the eligibility someone to look down on and accuse of fraud and being "welfare queens" and to maintain a negative attitude toward those in need while strengthening association with those on "your" side even if their financial situation is a thousand lifetimes removed from yours and poverty is only a bad month or health issue away.

LucienSchwab 3y ago

Poverty means you consume more than you produce. I assume poverty here is money-poverty. Poverty is relative. The implicit question is how to distribute resources to individuals according to how much good they provide to society. Good is the meaning of life, reproduction/sustainability and creation/development/infinitePonzi, really complex to estimate. We have invented money as an abstract representation of resources (food, clothes, energy, services, attention).

mathgradthrow 3y ago

My father and I fight about this a lot. His take is that if you give peiple money, they won't work, which will be bad. I understand his complaint, but the empirical evidence for it is that, when welfare was tied to having children, people apparently gamed the system by using less money on their kids than the welfare provided. This seems like it's probably most american's understanding of a welfare system, and my father is totally unwilling to consider that this problem of incentives can be remedied, though he is reasonably easy to convince of the value of giving employees negotiating power to quit their jobs and be able to survive. For me this is where the entire argument lies. A basic income (that does not depend on children) asserts the right to subsist without a job. Employment can offer you a better life, but it should not be able to offer you life itself. An employer that wields that carrot also wields that stick, and can exploit the difference to incredible social harm.

hellojesus 3y ago
[flagged]
tenebrisalietum 3y ago
> His take is that if you give peiple money, they won't work, which will be bad. There are a lot of people with money (high net-worth) that work (have some position in a company that they could get fired from), e.g. Jeff Bezos, many if not all CEOs, etc. So your father's take is either A) false, or B) what people with money are doing is not work, and is therefore bad.
- gruez 3y ago
  >There are a lot of people with money (high net-worth) that work (have some position in a company that they could get fired from), e.g. Jeff Bezos, many if not all CEOs, etc. The exception doesn't prove the rule. Just because some really driven people are willing to be a CEO when they have far more money than they could ever need, doesn't mean that the average burger flipper is going to continue working at mcdonalds if his living expenses were fully paid by the government.

endisneigh 3y ago

If you give poor people money and they still had problems, then what? More money? There lies the problem. Children should not be poor, but how can you ensure accountability on the part of the parents?

governmentdude 3y ago
The money solves problems, if I'm interpreting the article correctly. We usually don't concern ourselves with accountability for other government spending (from corp tax breaks for R&D to FEMA shelters/tarps, and not forgetting the infinitely juicy supply contracts, big4 consulting fees). Why do you feel that poverty-relief is different to these other types of government spending? Why should it be held to a higher standard? What are your values?
- endisneigh 3y ago
  When did I say it was different? There should be accountability there too.
  - governmentdude 3y ago
    > but how can you ensure accountability Right there is where you suggest that accountability MUST be 'ensured'. This is a very high accounting standard to set, much higher than normal for any federal programs that I'm aware of. I don't understand why you feel that a program that relieves a core ill of society (poverty) should waste no money. Anything that reduces poverty makes the rest of government services cheaper, as it so closely relates to crime. Is it that you don't trust the decision making of the individuals just because they're poor? If not, then what is it you expect?
    - endisneigh 3y ago
      How much money should be spent?
enragedcacti 3y ago

atoav 3y ago

Everything that is wrong with the way most of the political class pretends to fight poverty can be traced back to one principle: Divide and Conquer Solving a problem is a very stupid idea if: - your wealth depends on not solving it - people keep voting for you to solve it Not to get too political, but this equally applies to politicans who have chosen "foreigners" as their issue. A former friend of mine who turned neo nazi once asked me in a discussion to give him one reason not to vote for $horrible_xenophobic_party. My reason was that they won't solve his problem with foreigners. The last time they had been in government the migration was higher than during the social democratic government before and after. If they would have solved it, they would have taken away the number one topic for which people keep voting them. They are interested in power, corruption and neoliberal economics, the foreigner schtick is just a vehicle to get there. With poverty it is very similar. Many political parties take poverty as a decoy to explain why the policy they wanted to do anyways will solve it. E.g. cutting social security or ramping up police funding. Actual policies that help have to do with taxing the rich more, giving poor people the access to education and solving basic needs so they can actually make use of that access etc. But yeah. Trickle down. Any minute now.

shuntress 3y ago
This is not directly related to your comment but the funny thing about the "trickle down" metaphor is that it actually makes a very strong case against Reaganomics. "Water", in the metaphor, is obviously money and as we all know water (for the most part) "trickles down" from places where there is less of it to places where there is more of it. The rich get richer. The poor stay poorer. Without regular and constant application of outside force in the form of regulation, taxation, redistribution of wealth, monopoly breakups, etc (in the metaphor, this is represented by the Sun) all wealth eventually pools in the few oceans and everywhere else is barren.
- pandaman 3y ago
  It's funny because the "trickle down" metaphor has been made up by a Democrat humorist [1]. On the same note, why would you think it was made up for Republicans? 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics

gosub100 3y ago

Do economists share any culpability here? I thought their job was to apply their sharp minds and apply "systems" to achieve certain goals (not limited to addressing poverty). What if we compare it to other sciences? Say we didn't understand flight as well as we do, and we have this problem where planes keep crashing, maybe 2-3 a year (like it was in the 1980s-1990s) and instead of getting to the bottom of it and fixing the underlying problem, aerospace engineers and expert pilots just shrugged their shoulders, "whelp, that sucks.." and kept up the status quo? What if in the late '70s this new virus started spreading among gay men, and doctors just shrugged and said "well we can treat the symptoms and make our best guess how to avoid it, but damned if I know what's going on..."? How long would we keep awarding academic medals, increasing professors' salaries (and of course tuition), and lauding these doctors as heroes if they never advanced the state of their art? Why are economists shielded from a similar failure in their chosen profession?

dfxm12 3y ago
As the article suggests, the issue is with political policy. Economists don't implement political policy. Politicians do.
- gosub100 3y ago
  So there's a theory/program that will end poverty (because the brilliant minds in economics thought of/simulated/tested it?) but politicians won't allow it to be implemented? I'm not implying anything with that question, please answer directly.
wavemode 3y ago
People often get this wrong. The goal of economics is not to fix economic systems, any more than the goal of psychology is to make the human mind perfect, or the goal of political science is to guarantee that your candidate wins every election. What these all have in common is they are merely descriptive sciences, not engineered solutions to specific problems. Understanding how something works currently, is not the same as having the tools to make it work better. To use a similar example to the one you gave - the common cold is one of the most common and well-studied illnesses known to man, but there is no vaccine for it. Lazy scientists? No, it's just that not every problem has an easy solution.

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debacle 3y ago

The EIC doesn't exist because of some Randian ethos at the heart of American politics, and I believe most Democrats and some Republicans are in favor of reform, but you actually have to pass a law to get reform, and unfortunately that has resulted for the last 20+ years in a complete breakdown of our system. I see our social safety net abused on a daily basis on my role, and I also am keenly aware that both parties use it as a campaigning tool, because single moms in the city working two jobs either receive too much, or too little government support, depending on who is campaigning for what. We really need to start making goal-focused policy decisions in the US, especially when it comes to social support and education. When I read about the justification for the strong social safety net in many parts of Europe, it doesn't sound like a socialist hellscape to me, it sounds like common sense.