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> The program has allowed Mr. Chaillou and his wife to raise their two boys in the city. But he knows that the future of social housing will always face at leas

by smeej 3y ago

> The program has allowed Mr. Chaillou and his wife to raise their two boys in the city. But he knows that the future of social housing will always face at least one big challenge: “The problem is that once you get in, you never want to leave.” I think this is the reason so many in the U.S. are skeptical of/resistant to such plans. Why work your butt off for 10 years to get to a place where you can afford a nice dwelling if you can also wait 10 years, working but not pushing yourself, and someone else will pay for it for you? And then once you have it, there's even less incentive to try to "move up" from there, because there's now a cliff in front of you. You have to make the whole jump in one go, because if you only take incremental steps, you lose eligibility for your subsidies. American culture doesn't like to think about how much of "success" is down to luck. As often as possible, we want to think it's earned. The idea of trying to make up for some of the luck factor by taking some from those with more and giving it to those with less is almost instinctively repugnant, even if it might lead to higher quality of life for everyone involved.

jvanderbot 3y ago
> instinctively repugnant To some. In very-red areas that I have relatives, they're happy to do a food drive, make donations, help pay for weddings or funerals, or show up to help repair houses. When you have 100 cousins and 10 brothers, this is a viable option. They frequent each others businesses, work on interconnected industries, and in general help out however they can. It's not instinctively repugnant to help, or to give, it's instinctively repugnant to give outside their community. That seems a more fundamental problem with tax-rich/give-poor mentality. These folks make tons of charitable donations in money, in kind, and in time, but oppose wealth redistribution.
- ericmcer 3y ago
  I think it is most repugnant when you are working really hard and (very slowly) building your life up. It was really easy to be charitable when I was young and working meaningless jobs for $15/hr and I had my whole life ahead, and it will probably be easy when I am retired and no longer feel the strain of 50/hr workweeks. For now though it is brutal watching taxes eat huge chunks of your income so they can spend flagrantly.
  - Spivak 3y ago
    I'm in the working stage and it's the most charitable I've ever been, I finally have adult money. I can throw down anywhere from $100-$1000 to help someone on the regular and not even notice. What makes it so different for you where you have strictly more money than when you were young but have less money in excess? Folks in the comments saying being middle class is harder than being poor are insane to me, this is way better than when I was broke.
- snowwrestler 3y ago
  The hidden issue here is the effort of people with means to shape their community by expelling or excluding people they don’t want to help. Then their voluntary donations etc only help those whom they want to help. Well-known examples in the U.S. include the use of legal covenants, red lining, Jim Crow laws, and sometimes blatant intimidation to shape who can own which property where. Such changes persist for decades because of the illiquidity of property in general and the compounding effect of wealth discrepancies. So “outside their communities” is not a neutral, or purely geographic concept. Communities don’t just happen, they are intentionally constructed. U.S. governments, in contrast, are ostensibly bound by the republican concept generally and the 14th Amendment specifically, to provide protection and service equally. Even if the citizens in question don’t fit the preferred local definition of “who we want to help.” Edit add: I’m posting this because I think it helps clarify why some folks want government programs to exist to address social problems, as opposed to just counting on voluntary aid to solve it all. I don’t want to leave the impression that I think government programs are perfect or without flaws. I actually agree with the comments above that point out how means-tested programs can create incentives to “stand pat” and not try for incremental improvements. It’s policy problem that is well known but hard to fix.
  - mortify 3y ago
    > to provide protection and service equally That is what the law says. It is not what they do.
  - jvanderbot 3y ago
    > Communities don’t just happen, they are intentionally constructed. I, personally, agree with your informative pseudo-rebuttal (it's polite and impartial so not really anti-them). However, the philosophical difference is that > they are intentionally constructed is precisely the point, they might say. I've come to realize, after spending time with them and reading "righteous mind", that the difference is so fundamental it requires a lot more power to cross divides than I have. I simply have to recognize the right and good intent in what they do, rather than denigrate it as "not enough" or "in the slightly wrong direction even if enough". I imagine a world in which they decline to pay, and therefore to receive, benefits from wealth redistribution, and urbanites who are highly paid like ourselves subsidize other urbanites who are not. I also realize this world would have "rural" covens of uber rich, and so it will not be more just.
- WaitWaitWha 3y ago
  > by taking some from those with more and giving it to those with less is almost instinctively repugnant I think the first part of this statement is crucial to the full meaning. It is not about charity[0]. It is about redistribution of wealth by force is repugnant. [0] This 2022 reports states US is #3 in charity (giving). https://www.cafonline.org/docs/default-source/about-us-research/caf_world_giving_index_2022_210922-final.pdf https://www.cafonline.org/docs/default-source/about-us-resea...
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    Ah yes, the famous "actually americans donate a lot" nonsense. That report is based on SELF REPORTED donations. IE, giving Joel Olstein $10k to help him buy a new private jet is considered "charitable giving" and is also considered more charitable than if you just chat up the Asylum family that was just settled next door and help them get integrated into the local community to help them network and find work and friends, despite being way more impactful to human beings than that fucking grifter. That "research" will also consider donating to, say, an anti-abortion group or an explicitly anti-gay group as "donations", as long as you, the questionee, consider them to be. Also, being self reported with zero verification of any kind, Americans might just lie more about how much they "give". The IRS publishes statistics about claimed charitable giving. 2020 tax filers claimed about $150 million in charitable giving if I am reading the report correctly, so less than two dollars per American. That is definitely an undercount since most people who make small contributions do not itemize their taxes and probably don't report their charitable giving, but even that number will be tainted by a person "donating" their money to a charitable organization that they 100% control.
    - blackhawkC17 3y ago
      You're ranting incoherently. Americans give the most to non-religious organizations and charities by a wide margin (both individuals, corporations, and the government). For instance, the US government allocates $7 billion+ annually to the UN World Food Programme [1]. The next biggest donor? $1.7 billion. It's not even close. And no, $150 million in claimed charitable giving in 2020 is provably false. One ultra-rich individual alone is enough to top that figure. P.S: I'm not an American.
- callalex 3y ago
  Except for their gay cousin, their atheist cousin, their trans cousin, their mixed-race cousin…
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  >In very-red areas that I have relatives, they're happy to do a food drive, make donations, help pay for weddings or funerals, or show up to help repair houses Unless you are gay, trans, not the right kind of christian, have mental issues, are progressive in any way, are willing at all to contradict their absurd views of reality, want cheaper electricity through green energy, want any form of public transit, their family member has beef with you, you dared to question the authority of the local PD, you dare to question that drag queens are a threat, you think maybe gun control could have prevented the local school shooting or that the PD in that town could have done better and should be fired. The belief that actually rural people are really nice and altruistic is just laughable. Having grown up with them, they will only help you if you are the "right kind" of person, IE, if you are useful or beneficial to them. My white, catholic, french mom in a city of 9000 was completely ostracized, despite knowing every single family, and being a very generous and nice person, because she didn't have the right last name. Insular rural communities are all about local tyrannies, and local cliques, and if for ANY reason, no matter how tenuous or bullshit or even made up, you WILL be excluded if the local popular club doesn't like you. It's basically high school, which makes sense when you remember most rural communities are entirely made up of people who didn't do anything past high school and basically have not grown beyond that as people. >It's not instinctively repugnant to help, or to give, it's instinctively repugnant to give outside their community. These are the same concepts. Being unwilling to help outside your community IS being unwilling to help.
  - jvanderbot 3y ago
    > Unless you are ... This is a well-trod stereotype, probably for good reason, and it may also be your personal experience, so I'm not going to refute it generally. But this is not the case for the folks I was referring to.
  - Terr_ 3y ago
    Went looking for literature, this doesn't quite address in-group charity versus general causes, but FWIW: > All else held constant, rural respondents were almost 5.2 percentage points less likely to be a charitable donor, and donated less, on average, than urban donors, after controlling for human and social capital variables, such as education level, income level, health status, religious affiliation, family composition, and others. Rural respondents were significantly less likely to be donors to secular charities, and gave less on average to secular causes overall. These differences do not exist when comparing the religious giving of rural and urban respondents. > However, rural donors donated a statistically significantly higher percentage of their income to charity than did urban donors. Also, rural donors are more likely to donate to religious causes than secular causes. Frequent religious attendance is associated with a higher probability of giving for rural residents, as is itemization of deductions on income tax returns. -- Comparing Donation Patterns of Rural and Urban Donors -- https://scholarworks.iupui.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/0053a535-6219-4717-99a5-b3cdedf146c4/content https://scholarworks.iupui.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/00...
- SequoiaHope 3y ago
  Agreed. As David Harvey says, “wealth redistribution is the lowest form of socialism”. I suspect he would say that mutual aid is the highest, and counter to many common narratives in our society rural conservatives are very pro mutual aid. I would speculate that it’s primarily wealthy conservatives who own and influence the media that really drive the narratives against other forms of wealth redistribution, while poorer conservatives are more in favor of social safety nets.
slibhb 3y ago
> American culture doesn't like to think about how much of "success" is down to luck. As often as possible, we want to think it's earned. The idea of trying to make up for some of the luck factor by taking some from those with more and giving it to those with less is almost instinctively repugnant, even if it might lead to higher quality of life for everyone involved. The US is in the ballpark of other OECD countries in terms of social expenditure: https://www.compareyourcountry.org/social-expenditure https://www.compareyourcountry.org/social-expenditure
- Aunche 3y ago
  The US government actually spends more per capita on healthcare than the UK or Japan despite it not being universal. We're terribly inefficient with its social spending because have politics is so adversarial and nobody is interested in doing any due diligence.
  - staringback 3y ago
    > We're terribly inefficient with its social spending because have politics is so adversarial and nobody is interested in doing any due diligence. And I'm sure it has nothing to do with the United States having a very unhealthy population and pays doctors the highest salaries in the world.
    - chaorace 3y ago
      Chicken, meet egg.
      - tmnvix 3y ago
        I ordered one of each on Amazon. I'll let you know...
    - mlrtime 3y ago
      8% of healthcare spending is salaries, is that your smoking gun?
underlipton 3y ago
>Why work your butt off for 10 years to get to a place where you can afford a nice dwelling if you can also wait 10 years, working but not pushing yourself, and someone else will pay for it for you? Why would I have a problem with this if the "someone else" is a robot? Though I suppose, for the past 2-3 decades, it's been more like, "a worker whose productivity has been GREATLY increased by the advent if the Information Age." (I can see how the worker might be put off by that, but they also have the option of grabbing me and a few other people meeting witht he boss, and saying, "We're each going to do a small portion of my tasks, you're going to pay us the same as you used to, or nothing is going to get done at all.")
AndyMcConachie 3y ago
I'm so glad I left the USA and moved to The Netherlands. Public housing in NL isn't perfect, but the one thing I really really do not miss is listening to my fellow Americans share their opinions on the subject.
- mlrtime 3y ago
  And you still get to pay US taxes assuming you are a US citizen.
whywhywhywhy 3y ago
> American culture doesn't like to think about how much of "success" is down to luck Think it's more surprising how little of it is down to luck. Even working slightly harder reaps rewards quickly that outweigh the extra work. It's most just most people are not even putting in the minimum.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Luck controls the biggest swings in some cases, but diligent hard work covers for quite a bit of the small changes. Some people are just really bad at diligent hard work and lack the self control needed. The question is how to handle that without causing other issues.
  - smeej 3y ago
    Why do you think they're like that? Whether it's nature or nurture, doesn't luck still play a significant role in what nature or nurture they received?
- smeej 3y ago
  I think this only looks true on a local level. It's easy to see why Jimmy pulls ahead of Johnny when Jimmy's working more diligently, but they're starting from a fairly even playing field. A lot of the big cards are just dealt to you. Your parents, your skin, your religion, your school, your intelligence, your health, the neighborhood you grow up in--these things have a huge impact on what you do or don't have to overcome once you're old enough to take responsibility for your choices, and you don't get to pick them at the start. They have an outsized impact on what you even believe to be possible, never mind what you think is normal.
  - username332211 3y ago
    Is it me or are you going into the "You're no better than me. You are just lucky to have been taught good work ethic by your parents" territory?
    - 3y ago
vladvasiliu 3y ago
> And then once you have it, there's even less incentive to try to "move up" from there, because there's now a cliff in front of you. You have to make the whole jump in one go, because if you only take incremental steps, you lose eligibility for your subsidies. I don't know about other places, but I think this is a major issue in France. Many things stop altogether if you get above a certain limit of income. So many people end up working for minimum wage, because if they got 1 € more, they start "qualifying" for more taxes, lose access to social programs, etc.
- bombcar 3y ago
  This is much easier to deal with in "money payments" (you just make sure that every dollar extra you earn doesn't "cost" you more than fifty cents by having graduated wind down of payments) but can be much harder with things like programs that give you actual things, like housing or food. It can still be implemented (not by saying "if you make more money, you'll only get 29 days a month of this house" but making the cash subsidy for the housing explicit and able to be wound down) but it really has to be thought through. You really want some way for lower income people to move to middle income without having to give up their neighborhood, friends, everything. But if the neighborhood is entirely "working poor" and "filthy rich" you can't.
  - vladvasiliu 3y ago
    I completely agree. But somehow, I can't shake off the feeling that the unbelievable complexity in all things tax-related (and I include social programs therein) is a feature and not a bug (as in, it's intentional).
everforward 3y ago
People also don't like it because it in effect means the government is competing against you for property using your own money. I.e. if the government buys up 10% of the posh neighborhood to add cheap housing, the number of posh units goes down 10% and you paid for the taxes to make that happen. So you're paying taxes to give someone else the thing you want, and make it harder for you to get that thing in the future. Then you hear about some corruption scandal where the government was overpaying... I think American culture has a weird fetish for fairness. We'll do something that makes everyone worse off because at least it's distributed evenly. Admitting that success has a large luck component would mean admitting that the system isn't and cannot be made fair, and I just don't think that's an idea people can tolerate. How does our justice system function if it admits that defendants in bad situations are there because they're unlucky instead of bad people? How do we justify income inequality if we admit those at the top were lucky and that it would be a different set of people in an alternate universe? Basically our whole society is built on the idea that the system is fair and everyone is where they deserve to be because of choices they've made.
- bloppe 3y ago
  Fairness is not the same thing as equality, and most people appreciate that.
  - everforward 3y ago
    I don't mean equality, I'm talking about the basic kind of fairness that I would hope we can all agree on. Some children are going to grow up in abusive or neglectful homes, which isn't fair to them. Some portion of them are going to do poorly in school, which isn't really their fault, they're children. Those children then become adults who have to enter the workforce or try to get into college and be basically ranked in a lineup against everyone else, including people who had loving and supportive parents that bought them tutoring and what not. Where do we suddenly cross the line into being fair? Repeat that situation across a variety of different attributes. Sure everybody has to meet the same bar, but that doesn't imply the same odds of meeting it, or work to get there, or risk incurred to try. Is it fair to not build ramps on buildings because people in wheelchairs have equal access to the stairs? Is it fair to not give poor defendants attorneys because they have equal access to the market of lawyers? I don't think equality of outcomes is desirable because of externalities, but I do think it's worth closing the gap between the haves and have nots out of deference to the inherent unfairness in the system. I don't care for the extremes of income inequality we've arrived at under the guise of the system being perfectly or mostly fair.
lo_zamoyski 3y ago
I'm not sure how you connect the first paragraph with the second. > American culture doesn't like to think about how much of "success" is down to luck. [...] The idea of trying to make up for some of the luck factor by taking some from those with more and giving it to those with less is almost instinctively repugnant, even if it might lead to higher quality of life for everyone involved. I don't find charitable giving repugnant. I donate myself, even when there is no tax benefit to be gained. I don't find conservative and prudently managed social safety nets repugnant either (by prudent, I have in mind social safety nets that are by design meant to help people get out of poverty, not become dependent on such a system by creating incentives to remain effectively poor). I also recognize that the common good does require more than just money (and I do recognize a common good, unlike weird, sociopathic hyperindividualists). And in times of crisis, I recognize that a rigid notion of private property is opposed to the common good; private property exists, after all, for the sake of the common good. If I had a warehouse of food during a famine, I would not view people taking amounts of food from that warehouse to allow them to survive as theft. What I do find repugnant is what seems like the insinuation that my luck somehow means that others are entitled to what I have received through luck[0], and that my claim to such wealth is suspect. If I win the lottery, the notion that there is something unclean about receiving that wealth or bequeathing it to my children, because I was lucky, and others weren't, or else I'm a bad person, is preposterous. It reeks of envy. So, unless I've earned something, others can just take it? I have no right to it? But they have a right to it? Unless I've earned something, I must feel insecure about having it? No, actually. If I have received something through luck, through gift, through merit, and I have done so without criminality, it is mine. Now, if I did win the lottery, I would certainly give to charity. And if a competent state taxed me in a reasonable way to fund programs that genuine help lift the poor out of poverty, I have no issue in principle. And I would claim, that those who have surplus wealth beyond what is needed to fully support themselves and their families do well to use that surplus to aid the poor (the poor, mind you, not those who can make it on their own). I simply reject the notion that others can or should force me to do so. And when I have the freedom to decide on my own, I have the freedom to allocate money prudently. [0] https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1116.htm https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1116.htm
cheriot 3y ago
We don't have to define basic necessities as "success". We can all have them.
itishappy 3y ago
This is the main reason I'm drawn to Universal Basic Income (UBI). Give everybody a subsidy, regardless of their situation, and the cliff problem vanishes. If you never take away the subsidy, then there's always an incentive to improve.

by smeej 3y ago

jvanderbot 3y ago

> instinctively repugnant To some. In very-red areas that I have relatives, they're happy to do a food drive, make donations, help pay for weddings or funerals, or show up to help repair houses. When you have 100 cousins and 10 brothers, this is a viable option. They frequent each others businesses, work on interconnected industries, and in general help out however they can. It's not instinctively repugnant to help, or to give, it's instinctively repugnant to give outside their community. That seems a more fundamental problem with tax-rich/give-poor mentality. These folks make tons of charitable donations in money, in kind, and in time, but oppose wealth redistribution.

ericmcer 3y ago
I think it is most repugnant when you are working really hard and (very slowly) building your life up. It was really easy to be charitable when I was young and working meaningless jobs for $15/hr and I had my whole life ahead, and it will probably be easy when I am retired and no longer feel the strain of 50/hr workweeks. For now though it is brutal watching taxes eat huge chunks of your income so they can spend flagrantly.
- Spivak 3y ago
  I'm in the working stage and it's the most charitable I've ever been, I finally have adult money. I can throw down anywhere from $100-$1000 to help someone on the regular and not even notice. What makes it so different for you where you have strictly more money than when you were young but have less money in excess? Folks in the comments saying being middle class is harder than being poor are insane to me, this is way better than when I was broke.
snowwrestler 3y ago
The hidden issue here is the effort of people with means to shape their community by expelling or excluding people they don’t want to help. Then their voluntary donations etc only help those whom they want to help. Well-known examples in the U.S. include the use of legal covenants, red lining, Jim Crow laws, and sometimes blatant intimidation to shape who can own which property where. Such changes persist for decades because of the illiquidity of property in general and the compounding effect of wealth discrepancies. So “outside their communities” is not a neutral, or purely geographic concept. Communities don’t just happen, they are intentionally constructed. U.S. governments, in contrast, are ostensibly bound by the republican concept generally and the 14th Amendment specifically, to provide protection and service equally. Even if the citizens in question don’t fit the preferred local definition of “who we want to help.” Edit add: I’m posting this because I think it helps clarify why some folks want government programs to exist to address social problems, as opposed to just counting on voluntary aid to solve it all. I don’t want to leave the impression that I think government programs are perfect or without flaws. I actually agree with the comments above that point out how means-tested programs can create incentives to “stand pat” and not try for incremental improvements. It’s policy problem that is well known but hard to fix.
- mortify 3y ago
  > to provide protection and service equally That is what the law says. It is not what they do.
- jvanderbot 3y ago
  > Communities don’t just happen, they are intentionally constructed. I, personally, agree with your informative pseudo-rebuttal (it's polite and impartial so not really anti-them). However, the philosophical difference is that > they are intentionally constructed is precisely the point, they might say. I've come to realize, after spending time with them and reading "righteous mind", that the difference is so fundamental it requires a lot more power to cross divides than I have. I simply have to recognize the right and good intent in what they do, rather than denigrate it as "not enough" or "in the slightly wrong direction even if enough". I imagine a world in which they decline to pay, and therefore to receive, benefits from wealth redistribution, and urbanites who are highly paid like ourselves subsidize other urbanites who are not. I also realize this world would have "rural" covens of uber rich, and so it will not be more just.
WaitWaitWha 3y ago
> by taking some from those with more and giving it to those with less is almost instinctively repugnant I think the first part of this statement is crucial to the full meaning. It is not about charity[0]. It is about redistribution of wealth by force is repugnant. [0] This 2022 reports states US is #3 in charity (giving). https://www.cafonline.org/docs/default-source/about-us-research/caf_world_giving_index_2022_210922-final.pdf https://www.cafonline.org/docs/default-source/about-us-resea...
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  Ah yes, the famous "actually americans donate a lot" nonsense. That report is based on SELF REPORTED donations. IE, giving Joel Olstein $10k to help him buy a new private jet is considered "charitable giving" and is also considered more charitable than if you just chat up the Asylum family that was just settled next door and help them get integrated into the local community to help them network and find work and friends, despite being way more impactful to human beings than that fucking grifter. That "research" will also consider donating to, say, an anti-abortion group or an explicitly anti-gay group as "donations", as long as you, the questionee, consider them to be. Also, being self reported with zero verification of any kind, Americans might just lie more about how much they "give". The IRS publishes statistics about claimed charitable giving. 2020 tax filers claimed about $150 million in charitable giving if I am reading the report correctly, so less than two dollars per American. That is definitely an undercount since most people who make small contributions do not itemize their taxes and probably don't report their charitable giving, but even that number will be tainted by a person "donating" their money to a charitable organization that they 100% control.
  - blackhawkC17 3y ago
    You're ranting incoherently. Americans give the most to non-religious organizations and charities by a wide margin (both individuals, corporations, and the government). For instance, the US government allocates $7 billion+ annually to the UN World Food Programme [1]. The next biggest donor? $1.7 billion. It's not even close. And no, $150 million in claimed charitable giving in 2020 is provably false. One ultra-rich individual alone is enough to top that figure. P.S: I'm not an American.
callalex 3y ago
Except for their gay cousin, their atheist cousin, their trans cousin, their mixed-race cousin…
mrguyorama 3y ago
>In very-red areas that I have relatives, they're happy to do a food drive, make donations, help pay for weddings or funerals, or show up to help repair houses Unless you are gay, trans, not the right kind of christian, have mental issues, are progressive in any way, are willing at all to contradict their absurd views of reality, want cheaper electricity through green energy, want any form of public transit, their family member has beef with you, you dared to question the authority of the local PD, you dare to question that drag queens are a threat, you think maybe gun control could have prevented the local school shooting or that the PD in that town could have done better and should be fired. The belief that actually rural people are really nice and altruistic is just laughable. Having grown up with them, they will only help you if you are the "right kind" of person, IE, if you are useful or beneficial to them. My white, catholic, french mom in a city of 9000 was completely ostracized, despite knowing every single family, and being a very generous and nice person, because she didn't have the right last name. Insular rural communities are all about local tyrannies, and local cliques, and if for ANY reason, no matter how tenuous or bullshit or even made up, you WILL be excluded if the local popular club doesn't like you. It's basically high school, which makes sense when you remember most rural communities are entirely made up of people who didn't do anything past high school and basically have not grown beyond that as people. >It's not instinctively repugnant to help, or to give, it's instinctively repugnant to give outside their community. These are the same concepts. Being unwilling to help outside your community IS being unwilling to help.
- jvanderbot 3y ago
  > Unless you are ... This is a well-trod stereotype, probably for good reason, and it may also be your personal experience, so I'm not going to refute it generally. But this is not the case for the folks I was referring to.
- Terr_ 3y ago
  Went looking for literature, this doesn't quite address in-group charity versus general causes, but FWIW: > All else held constant, rural respondents were almost 5.2 percentage points less likely to be a charitable donor, and donated less, on average, than urban donors, after controlling for human and social capital variables, such as education level, income level, health status, religious affiliation, family composition, and others. Rural respondents were significantly less likely to be donors to secular charities, and gave less on average to secular causes overall. These differences do not exist when comparing the religious giving of rural and urban respondents. > However, rural donors donated a statistically significantly higher percentage of their income to charity than did urban donors. Also, rural donors are more likely to donate to religious causes than secular causes. Frequent religious attendance is associated with a higher probability of giving for rural residents, as is itemization of deductions on income tax returns. -- Comparing Donation Patterns of Rural and Urban Donors -- https://scholarworks.iupui.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/0053a535-6219-4717-99a5-b3cdedf146c4/content https://scholarworks.iupui.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/00...
SequoiaHope 3y ago
Agreed. As David Harvey says, “wealth redistribution is the lowest form of socialism”. I suspect he would say that mutual aid is the highest, and counter to many common narratives in our society rural conservatives are very pro mutual aid. I would speculate that it’s primarily wealthy conservatives who own and influence the media that really drive the narratives against other forms of wealth redistribution, while poorer conservatives are more in favor of social safety nets.

slibhb 3y ago

> American culture doesn't like to think about how much of "success" is down to luck. As often as possible, we want to think it's earned. The idea of trying to make up for some of the luck factor by taking some from those with more and giving it to those with less is almost instinctively repugnant, even if it might lead to higher quality of life for everyone involved. The US is in the ballpark of other OECD countries in terms of social expenditure: https://www.compareyourcountry.org/social-expenditure https://www.compareyourcountry.org/social-expenditure

Aunche 3y ago
The US government actually spends more per capita on healthcare than the UK or Japan despite it not being universal. We're terribly inefficient with its social spending because have politics is so adversarial and nobody is interested in doing any due diligence.
- staringback 3y ago
  > We're terribly inefficient with its social spending because have politics is so adversarial and nobody is interested in doing any due diligence. And I'm sure it has nothing to do with the United States having a very unhealthy population and pays doctors the highest salaries in the world.
  - chaorace 3y ago
    Chicken, meet egg.
    - tmnvix 3y ago
      I ordered one of each on Amazon. I'll let you know...
  - mlrtime 3y ago
    8% of healthcare spending is salaries, is that your smoking gun?

underlipton 3y ago

>Why work your butt off for 10 years to get to a place where you can afford a nice dwelling if you can also wait 10 years, working but not pushing yourself, and someone else will pay for it for you? Why would I have a problem with this if the "someone else" is a robot? Though I suppose, for the past 2-3 decades, it's been more like, "a worker whose productivity has been GREATLY increased by the advent if the Information Age." (I can see how the worker might be put off by that, but they also have the option of grabbing me and a few other people meeting witht he boss, and saying, "We're each going to do a small portion of my tasks, you're going to pay us the same as you used to, or nothing is going to get done at all.")

AndyMcConachie 3y ago

I'm so glad I left the USA and moved to The Netherlands. Public housing in NL isn't perfect, but the one thing I really really do not miss is listening to my fellow Americans share their opinions on the subject.

mlrtime 3y ago
And you still get to pay US taxes assuming you are a US citizen.

whywhywhywhy 3y ago

> American culture doesn't like to think about how much of "success" is down to luck Think it's more surprising how little of it is down to luck. Even working slightly harder reaps rewards quickly that outweigh the extra work. It's most just most people are not even putting in the minimum.

bombcar 3y ago
Luck controls the biggest swings in some cases, but diligent hard work covers for quite a bit of the small changes. Some people are just really bad at diligent hard work and lack the self control needed. The question is how to handle that without causing other issues.
- smeej 3y ago
  Why do you think they're like that? Whether it's nature or nurture, doesn't luck still play a significant role in what nature or nurture they received?
smeej 3y ago
I think this only looks true on a local level. It's easy to see why Jimmy pulls ahead of Johnny when Jimmy's working more diligently, but they're starting from a fairly even playing field. A lot of the big cards are just dealt to you. Your parents, your skin, your religion, your school, your intelligence, your health, the neighborhood you grow up in--these things have a huge impact on what you do or don't have to overcome once you're old enough to take responsibility for your choices, and you don't get to pick them at the start. They have an outsized impact on what you even believe to be possible, never mind what you think is normal.
- username332211 3y ago
  Is it me or are you going into the "You're no better than me. You are just lucky to have been taught good work ethic by your parents" territory?
  - 3y ago

vladvasiliu 3y ago

> And then once you have it, there's even less incentive to try to "move up" from there, because there's now a cliff in front of you. You have to make the whole jump in one go, because if you only take incremental steps, you lose eligibility for your subsidies. I don't know about other places, but I think this is a major issue in France. Many things stop altogether if you get above a certain limit of income. So many people end up working for minimum wage, because if they got 1 € more, they start "qualifying" for more taxes, lose access to social programs, etc.

bombcar 3y ago
This is much easier to deal with in "money payments" (you just make sure that every dollar extra you earn doesn't "cost" you more than fifty cents by having graduated wind down of payments) but can be much harder with things like programs that give you actual things, like housing or food. It can still be implemented (not by saying "if you make more money, you'll only get 29 days a month of this house" but making the cash subsidy for the housing explicit and able to be wound down) but it really has to be thought through. You really want some way for lower income people to move to middle income without having to give up their neighborhood, friends, everything. But if the neighborhood is entirely "working poor" and "filthy rich" you can't.
- vladvasiliu 3y ago
  I completely agree. But somehow, I can't shake off the feeling that the unbelievable complexity in all things tax-related (and I include social programs therein) is a feature and not a bug (as in, it's intentional).

everforward 3y ago

People also don't like it because it in effect means the government is competing against you for property using your own money. I.e. if the government buys up 10% of the posh neighborhood to add cheap housing, the number of posh units goes down 10% and you paid for the taxes to make that happen. So you're paying taxes to give someone else the thing you want, and make it harder for you to get that thing in the future. Then you hear about some corruption scandal where the government was overpaying... I think American culture has a weird fetish for fairness. We'll do something that makes everyone worse off because at least it's distributed evenly. Admitting that success has a large luck component would mean admitting that the system isn't and cannot be made fair, and I just don't think that's an idea people can tolerate. How does our justice system function if it admits that defendants in bad situations are there because they're unlucky instead of bad people? How do we justify income inequality if we admit those at the top were lucky and that it would be a different set of people in an alternate universe? Basically our whole society is built on the idea that the system is fair and everyone is where they deserve to be because of choices they've made.

bloppe 3y ago
Fairness is not the same thing as equality, and most people appreciate that.
- everforward 3y ago
  I don't mean equality, I'm talking about the basic kind of fairness that I would hope we can all agree on. Some children are going to grow up in abusive or neglectful homes, which isn't fair to them. Some portion of them are going to do poorly in school, which isn't really their fault, they're children. Those children then become adults who have to enter the workforce or try to get into college and be basically ranked in a lineup against everyone else, including people who had loving and supportive parents that bought them tutoring and what not. Where do we suddenly cross the line into being fair? Repeat that situation across a variety of different attributes. Sure everybody has to meet the same bar, but that doesn't imply the same odds of meeting it, or work to get there, or risk incurred to try. Is it fair to not build ramps on buildings because people in wheelchairs have equal access to the stairs? Is it fair to not give poor defendants attorneys because they have equal access to the market of lawyers? I don't think equality of outcomes is desirable because of externalities, but I do think it's worth closing the gap between the haves and have nots out of deference to the inherent unfairness in the system. I don't care for the extremes of income inequality we've arrived at under the guise of the system being perfectly or mostly fair.

lo_zamoyski 3y ago

I'm not sure how you connect the first paragraph with the second. > American culture doesn't like to think about how much of "success" is down to luck. [...] The idea of trying to make up for some of the luck factor by taking some from those with more and giving it to those with less is almost instinctively repugnant, even if it might lead to higher quality of life for everyone involved. I don't find charitable giving repugnant. I donate myself, even when there is no tax benefit to be gained. I don't find conservative and prudently managed social safety nets repugnant either (by prudent, I have in mind social safety nets that are by design meant to help people get out of poverty, not become dependent on such a system by creating incentives to remain effectively poor). I also recognize that the common good does require more than just money (and I do recognize a common good, unlike weird, sociopathic hyperindividualists). And in times of crisis, I recognize that a rigid notion of private property is opposed to the common good; private property exists, after all, for the sake of the common good. If I had a warehouse of food during a famine, I would not view people taking amounts of food from that warehouse to allow them to survive as theft. What I do find repugnant is what seems like the insinuation that my luck somehow means that others are entitled to what I have received through luck[0], and that my claim to such wealth is suspect. If I win the lottery, the notion that there is something unclean about receiving that wealth or bequeathing it to my children, because I was lucky, and others weren't, or else I'm a bad person, is preposterous. It reeks of envy. So, unless I've earned something, others can just take it? I have no right to it? But they have a right to it? Unless I've earned something, I must feel insecure about having it? No, actually. If I have received something through luck, through gift, through merit, and I have done so without criminality, it is mine. Now, if I did win the lottery, I would certainly give to charity. And if a competent state taxed me in a reasonable way to fund programs that genuine help lift the poor out of poverty, I have no issue in principle. And I would claim, that those who have surplus wealth beyond what is needed to fully support themselves and their families do well to use that surplus to aid the poor (the poor, mind you, not those who can make it on their own). I simply reject the notion that others can or should force me to do so. And when I have the freedom to decide on my own, I have the freedom to allocate money prudently. [0] https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1116.htm https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1116.htm

cheriot 3y ago

We don't have to define basic necessities as "success". We can all have them.

itishappy 3y ago

This is the main reason I'm drawn to Universal Basic Income (UBI). Give everybody a subsidy, regardless of their situation, and the cliff problem vanishes. If you never take away the subsidy, then there's always an incentive to improve.