6 ms·

Why should someone that is mentally/physically unable to contribute to society live in poverty?

by OoTLink 13y ago

dalke 13y ago
Mmm, you changed my wording from "unable to work" to the much more ambiguous "unable to contribute to society." But otherwise, yes. Given the massive improvements in efficiency over the last 200 years, why should the relatively small number of people who are unable to work be forced to live in poverty?
jerf 13y ago
"Poverty" is a term that pretty much scotches any chance at reasonable discussion from the start. What's "fair" for someone who really can't contribute? Is it fair for them to live better than those who are paying for their life style? What about the fact that the person who really can't contribute probably also seems some sort of relatively expensive accommodations? "Minimum living + basic accommodations" may still come out to more "money" being spent on them than a normally-abled person making a reasonable low-end wage, even if it initially appears they're living in "poverty". Is that fair? When it comes to fair, you have to remember that the money is coming from somebody else, who has their own claim to "fairness" themselves. There's no infinite money fountain that allows us to simply forget that; it's always a balance. How much work should the normally-abled be forced to do by the men-with-guns (government) for those who can't contribute? It's a really, really hard question. I don't have answers for my rhetorical questions in the previous paragraph.
- dalke 13y ago
  There's an easier reformulation, at least for Denmark. Denmark doesn't have a minimum wage. Instead, many wages are set via collective bargaining. (The unions argue that this is more effective than a national minimum wage.) So for Denmark let's not talk about "poverty" but "below the minimum wage for all private and public sector collective bargaining agreements", which Wikipedia tells us is 109 kroner ($19) per hour. "There's no infinite money fountain" ... how come with all of the advances in efficiency over the century, we're still working roughly the 8 hour days from factories 100 years ago? While not infinite, surely we should be better at using that fountain by now. I read "forced to do by the men-with-guns" often, though of course not always, from libertarians. I've always had a problem with that. There's coercion by force, certainly, but there are other ways to coerce. The government can also deny you access to things. For example, to a working water supply and sewage system, to the banking system, to telephones, to health care, to parental leave, to the judicial system, to weather reports, and so on. Some of that can be worked around, like by going off the grid, but not all. It's very hard to travel internationally if the US refuses to issue a passport. If you don't have access to the court system, then what do you do when your neighbor decides to move the fence 3 meters closer to your house? Indeed, I can easily consider a government based completely on the threat of the withdrawal of services rather than force. Some very rich people, and certain groups like the Amish, may be able to go it alone. Otherwise, the switching cost of leaving government services will be too high. So no, I don't think that it's reasonable to think of government as synonymous, even poetically speaking, with coercion by force. You need only look at, say, the Viking sagas of Iceland to see how governments can exist to help reduce the overall need for coercion by force.
  - judk 13y ago
    An unskilled unemployed person in say NYC today has a faaaaar better life than such a person in NYC in 1914.
    - dalke 13y ago
      You aren't helping. This sort of statement is why debates about poverty end up all over the place. Yes, computers were once so expensive that, quoting Professor Frink, "only the five richest kings of Europe would own them". Now they just about come free in a box of cereal. The usual solutions are either 1) use something like the OECD approach, where poverty is the number of people making under 1/2 the median income, or 2) use a "relatively absolute" basket of goods concept, which includes housing and food. Instead, you hand-wave "faaaaar better", without explaining what you mean. For example, it is not "faaaaar" easier for said unskilled person in NYC to find affordable housing now than 1914. For one, zoning laws and regulations have reduced the number of boarding houses, cage hotels, and flop houses over the last century. You can have all the bandwidth you want, in your proverbial shelter under the bridge, but it won't keep you warm.
  - jerf 13y ago
    "While not infinite, surely we should be better at using that fountain by now." Simple: We are. Or at least, there's a lot more to go around for everybody, even if overall efficiency may or may not have dropped. However, as long as resources remain finite, there are still tradeoffs; we can not escape that. I think the reason we believe we are so much poorer than we were a hundred years ago is that we got ten times richer, but our desires grew twenty times larger. We are still ten times richer even so. (Numbers made up. Especially the desires one.) "The government can also deny you access to things." Which they will be doing with force, unless you have this mental model in which the government announces "Oh, BTW, we're not letting you have any water" and your mental model's citizens just say "Oh, OK then, we'll just peacefully crawl over here and die then. Would you like us to bury ourselves for your convenience?" Indeed many people do seem to operate with this model, but I find it models reality poorly and makes bad predictions. I suppose it comes from a multigenerational civilization where government and citizens have mostly managed to live in peace, and it seems to me that seems to produce a dangerous situation in which both sides eventually forget what that peace is built on.

Why should someone that is mentally/physically unable to contribute to society live in poverty?

by OoTLink 13y ago

Why should someone that is mentally/physically unable to contribute to society live in poverty?

dalke 13y ago

Mmm, you changed my wording from "unable to work" to the much more ambiguous "unable to contribute to society." But otherwise, yes. Given the massive improvements in efficiency over the last 200 years, why should the relatively small number of people who are unable to work be forced to live in poverty?

jerf 13y ago

"Poverty" is a term that pretty much scotches any chance at reasonable discussion from the start. What's "fair" for someone who really can't contribute? Is it fair for them to live better than those who are paying for their life style? What about the fact that the person who really can't contribute probably also seems some sort of relatively expensive accommodations? "Minimum living + basic accommodations" may still come out to more "money" being spent on them than a normally-abled person making a reasonable low-end wage, even if it initially appears they're living in "poverty". Is that fair? When it comes to fair, you have to remember that the money is coming from somebody else, who has their own claim to "fairness" themselves. There's no infinite money fountain that allows us to simply forget that; it's always a balance. How much work should the normally-abled be forced to do by the men-with-guns (government) for those who can't contribute? It's a really, really hard question. I don't have answers for my rhetorical questions in the previous paragraph.

dalke 13y ago
There's an easier reformulation, at least for Denmark. Denmark doesn't have a minimum wage. Instead, many wages are set via collective bargaining. (The unions argue that this is more effective than a national minimum wage.) So for Denmark let's not talk about "poverty" but "below the minimum wage for all private and public sector collective bargaining agreements", which Wikipedia tells us is 109 kroner ($19) per hour. "There's no infinite money fountain" ... how come with all of the advances in efficiency over the century, we're still working roughly the 8 hour days from factories 100 years ago? While not infinite, surely we should be better at using that fountain by now. I read "forced to do by the men-with-guns" often, though of course not always, from libertarians. I've always had a problem with that. There's coercion by force, certainly, but there are other ways to coerce. The government can also deny you access to things. For example, to a working water supply and sewage system, to the banking system, to telephones, to health care, to parental leave, to the judicial system, to weather reports, and so on. Some of that can be worked around, like by going off the grid, but not all. It's very hard to travel internationally if the US refuses to issue a passport. If you don't have access to the court system, then what do you do when your neighbor decides to move the fence 3 meters closer to your house? Indeed, I can easily consider a government based completely on the threat of the withdrawal of services rather than force. Some very rich people, and certain groups like the Amish, may be able to go it alone. Otherwise, the switching cost of leaving government services will be too high. So no, I don't think that it's reasonable to think of government as synonymous, even poetically speaking, with coercion by force. You need only look at, say, the Viking sagas of Iceland to see how governments can exist to help reduce the overall need for coercion by force.
- judk 13y ago
  An unskilled unemployed person in say NYC today has a faaaaar better life than such a person in NYC in 1914.
  - dalke 13y ago
    You aren't helping. This sort of statement is why debates about poverty end up all over the place. Yes, computers were once so expensive that, quoting Professor Frink, "only the five richest kings of Europe would own them". Now they just about come free in a box of cereal. The usual solutions are either 1) use something like the OECD approach, where poverty is the number of people making under 1/2 the median income, or 2) use a "relatively absolute" basket of goods concept, which includes housing and food. Instead, you hand-wave "faaaaar better", without explaining what you mean. For example, it is not "faaaaar" easier for said unskilled person in NYC to find affordable housing now than 1914. For one, zoning laws and regulations have reduced the number of boarding houses, cage hotels, and flop houses over the last century. You can have all the bandwidth you want, in your proverbial shelter under the bridge, but it won't keep you warm.
- jerf 13y ago
  "While not infinite, surely we should be better at using that fountain by now." Simple: We are. Or at least, there's a lot more to go around for everybody, even if overall efficiency may or may not have dropped. However, as long as resources remain finite, there are still tradeoffs; we can not escape that. I think the reason we believe we are so much poorer than we were a hundred years ago is that we got ten times richer, but our desires grew twenty times larger. We are still ten times richer even so. (Numbers made up. Especially the desires one.) "The government can also deny you access to things." Which they will be doing with force, unless you have this mental model in which the government announces "Oh, BTW, we're not letting you have any water" and your mental model's citizens just say "Oh, OK then, we'll just peacefully crawl over here and die then. Would you like us to bury ourselves for your convenience?" Indeed many people do seem to operate with this model, but I find it models reality poorly and makes bad predictions. I suppose it comes from a multigenerational civilization where government and citizens have mostly managed to live in peace, and it seems to me that seems to produce a dangerous situation in which both sides eventually forget what that peace is built on.