Is Proverty in US "Too Comfortable"?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

And it ignores the fact that a lot of those luxury items get placed on markdown. What if the lobster and steak were 50% off because they were on their expiry date and about to spoil? Already looking funny around the edges? It became a good deal, but tastelessly cooked until safe to eat, it's hardly a luxury item. People see things from a distance, offhand, and make assumptions about them with no context.

$200.00/month is an excessive amount for food for one person, which is the max on food stamps. But to actually survive most people barter some of the food purchased with that amount into things like toilet paper, a couch to crash on when completely homeless... Because they're getting absolutely nothing else from the government. A homeless person with enough food to be fat is currently how the US system is set up: A smart person can use that extra padding to get better conditions than being homeless, but that's it.

And that's pampering?

Oh I know people barter some of their food benefit for other things. The things you mentioned, but also alcohol or drugs. It's rather a poor allocation of resources then isn't it? I'm not advocating letting people starve, but the system we have now of "here is $200 go spend it however you like" is a bad one.

It's basically total bullshit that also carries the interesting implication that the poor are obligated to be miserable and completely destitute. You see the same thing when people whine about poor people having iPhones or even laptops. You can even see it in this guy's opinion that people stay in poverty because we haven't made them miserable or desperate enough to want to escape. It conveniently ignores how many working people use welfare, food stamps, or other assistance, and negatively judges the poor for even the smallest "luxuries" like refrigerators or phones.

.

I don't know of any reasonable person begrudging anyone basic phone service or refrigerators. But persons below the poverty line on welfare should not be in a position where they are able to afford things such as laptops and iphones that working people "just above" the poverty line can not. And yet that's the reality. And when someone on welfare sees they actually would be worse off should they try to get off welfare, then that is obviously a major dis-incentive for them to even try.

It ISN'T allowed for you to do it. I'm saying it happens anyway because otherwise these people would be homeless because they're not getting other aid. $200.00 is also a total pittance. I mean, we don't even let people buy toilet paper with it, so of course the truly impoverished have to barter.

I'd much prefer $200 for food and $300.00 of anything money as a minimum, the later coming automatically at the same ratio with food aid. Then we need to provide free housing too-even if it's dormitory style it would be better than nothing, and would help the very poor get themselves in a position to do something better. It's hardly comfortable to couch surf, and the idea that you can afford a laptop, as opposed to bartering your way into a half-broken castoff from a friend, is just totally absurd.

[Surlethe]

I feel pulled to this thread like a fly's magnetic attraction to rotting meat. Sadly, I have to do math, so let me just jump in with my favorite study on this topic:

The effective marginal tax rate is the percentage of an additional dollar of earnings that is unavailable to a worker because it is paid in taxes or offset by reductions in benefits from government programs. In part, such rates are determined by income and payroll tax rates and other features of the tax system, such as tax credits and deductions that depend on earnings. However, effective marginal tax rates are also determined by programs providing cash and in-kind benefits, referred to as transfers, that target assistance to people of reduced means. Because increases in earnings for low- and moderate-income workers can cause relatively large reductions in such assistance, this analysis of effective marginal tax rates (hereafter referred to as marginal tax rates) focuses on those workers. Those rates affect people’s incentives to work: All else being equal, people tend to work fewer hours when marginal tax rates are high.

How is this relevant? Just because it supports what the Cato guy was saying: we don't give a fuck about actually helping people out of poverty, or eliminating poverty outright. If liberals did, we'd be screaming for welfare reform louder than conservatives, not pissing on about how the listed marginal tax rates on the wealthy aren't quite as high as we want them to be. Well guess what, we're taxing poor people at 30%, how many fucks are liberals giving? Zero. Welfare exists to make poor people a little more comfortable and to make liberals feel good about ourselves, not to help poor people.

[Surlethe]

If the goal is to invest money in consumer spending, handing poor people checks up front works.

If the goal is to invest money in the education and job-search efforts of the poor, handing poor people checks and saying "go do whatever" is not so brilliant.

Neither should be the goal. Macroeconomic stability is the regime of the monetary authority (*cough*NGDPLT*cough*), and investing money in education and labor market clearing should be separate, broadly targeted endeavors. Welfare should have two purposes, and only two purposes: (a) make sure that everybody has basic human necessities like food, heat, clothing, shelter; (b) make sure that in meeting (a) the post-tax, post-benefit curve is everywhere monotone increasing and concave down.

It ISN'T allowed for you to do it. I'm saying it happens anyway because otherwise these people would be homeless because they're not getting other aid. $200.00 is also a total pittance. I mean, we don't even let people buy toilet paper with it, so of course the truly impoverished have to barter.

It's not allowed because "this is an ag department program and its purpose is to get rid of surplus production, not help poor people, and anyway you're poor so fuck you, I know better than you what you should spend your money on." At least that's what I hear any time someone talks about food stamps.

I'd much prefer $200 for food and $300.00 of anything money as a minimum, the later coming automatically at the same ratio with food aid. Then we need to provide free housing too-even if it's dormitory style it would be better than nothing, and would help the very poor get themselves in a position to do something better. It's hardly comfortable to couch surf, and the idea that you can afford a laptop, as opposed to bartering your way into a half-broken castoff from a friend, is just totally absurd.

My preferred solution is a negative income tax, where every person - man, woman, and child - is guaranteed an income of at least 30% of per-capita GDP. Let's not even bother with mandating how much must be spent on food or anything else, or with building and staffing a Department of Housing; let people figure out what's best for them and their families, and give them the cash so that they have options.

[Elheru Aran]

Elheru, I have a deaf aunt that is on partial social security disability. She works part time. I'm serious, you need to apply. It's a federal program so I don't see how you being in Georgia would matter.

Important question that occurred to me while I was at work last night: is this actual disability, or is it SSI (supplemental income payments)? There's a distinction between the two... often vague, I'll grant you, but I know SSI is what a lot of deaf people back where I used to live as a child used.

One point that does occur to me is that for me, at least, and I'm sure there are a number of other impoverished people out there that feel the same way--

There is definitely a certain element of pride going on here at some degree. Some people will draw a line where they don't want to take "handouts"; that's the biggest reason we stopped using a local food pantry (though my wife was more okay with applying for food stamps, go figure). They figure, "if we're making it so far, why should we take advantage of the system? There's people out there who need it more than us."

As some may have ascertained, there is a bit of discord currently between my wife and I when it comes to this kind of issue... I'd prefer to use all resources available to us, she would rather try to make it on our own. With that kind of attitude, a straight-up handout of money from the government is harder to accept, perhaps.

Of course, we may be special snowflakes, I don't know...

[Flagg]

Elheru, I have a deaf aunt that is on partial social security disability. She works part time. I'm serious, you need to apply. It's a federal program so I don't see how you being in Georgia would matter.

Important question that occurred to me while I was at work last night: is this actual disability, or is it SSI (supplemental income payments)? There's a distinction between the two... often vague, I'll grant you, but I know SSI is what a lot of deaf people back where I used to live as a child used.

One point that does occur to me is that for me, at least, and I'm sure there are a number of other impoverished people out there that feel the same way--

There is definitely a certain element of pride going on here at some degree. Some people will draw a line where they don't want to take "handouts"; that's the biggest reason we stopped using a local food pantry (though my wife was more okay with applying for food stamps, go figure). They figure, "if we're making it so far, why should we take advantage of the system? There's people out there who need it more than us."

As some may have ascertained, there is a bit of discord currently between my wife and I when it comes to this kind of issue... I'd prefer to use all resources available to us, she would rather try to make it on our own. With that kind of attitude, a straight-up handout of money from the government is harder to accept, perhaps.

Of course, we may be special snowflakes, I don't know...

Yeah taking money from the government, even when you cannot work like in my case, is hard. At first. But I'm pretty sure it was SSD, not SSI.

[Flagg]

Ok after talking to my mom about SSD and SSI, you can earn up to $748 a month for the first six months and that's on full SSD. After six months you can earn $1k a month and still qualify for full disability. You will also get Medicare and depending on how fucking backwards Georgia is about social welfare, Medicaid. You are entitled to these things and they will make your life much easier. I really urge you to apply whether your wife wants to or not.

[Stark]

My preferred solution is a negative income tax, where every person - man, woman, and child - is guaranteed an income of at least 30% of per-capita GDP. Let's not even bother with mandating how much must be spent on food or anything else, or with building and staffing a Department of Housing; let people figure out what's best for them and their families, and give them the cash so that they have options.

You've mentioned this before and it always rings a bell, so at the risk of sounding like a total idiot is this similar to the solution Friedman suggested in a book decades ago? Its interesting to me because putting aside people arguing over how much poor people should suffer or whatever, simple systems always avoid targeting or overlap problems for the service and have much easier oversight and enforcement.

[energiewende]

The reason simple systems aren't favoured is that they still allow people to put themselves in bad situations. In the current system you can't have 10 kids you are unable to put through school, because the government will pay you more and more money as you have more kids you ostensibly can't support and it will provide them with schooling as a service in kind. If we gave working-age adults all benefits as a negative income tax cash payment, they could run out of money after kid #3 and fail to save any for elementary and high school.

This of course means more people will have 10 kids and other silly things that place unnecessary burdens on society, but since it remains fairly rare it's preferred that this happens rather than some people do it anyway and then end up completely broke with the kids bearing the brunt of it. This aspect of the welfare state is paternalist rather than purely redistributionist.

Then again, OP mentioned kids born out of wedlock, and with illegitimacy pushing 50% of all births maybe we are no longer talking about a few outliers.

[Stark]

I don't think you're really talking about the same thing. Surlethe doesn't consider a suggested system perfect or prevent people 'putting themselves in bad situations'; I believe he simply considers it fairer. I consider the cost of the system probably lower, due to its easier applicability and lower complexity resulting in easier enforcement.

Frankly, refusing to change a broken system until you have one that allows no failure is a poor attitude to change.

[energiewende]

I don't necessarily disagree by the way - but I think a system that strongly incentivises people not to make bad financial decisions, not to save money, to have kids out of wedlock, etc. has to harshly punish people who do these things more or less by definition. If there's no penalty then people will not care. That is why these practices became so common - when the welfare state was set up almost no one did these things because you would not survive if you did them, and so everyone naturally assumed the welfare state would only cover gaps when people were unemployed against their will. It seems that it changed the structure of social incentives completely. So making people live with the consequences of their actions - even if those consequences are quite bad and at least some of the people are innocent victims of circumstance - is a bullet that must be bitten.

Would you for instance be happy with going back to a system when people were strongly encouraged to give up any children they accidentally had out of wedlock to orphanages, something that at some point would be practically forced by removing needs-based child welfare?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I think part of the problem is that in terms of things like TANF and other state-administered federal programmes, Georgia has used state administrative control of the process to make it so hard to apply that it isn't really worth the time and effort if you can work, because finding and working a second job despite your disability is probably more plausible. Georgia will reject applications for misspelled words, slightly misplaced commas, the reviewer cannot understand if a letter is the correct j or an incorrect i, failure to include the four digit extension to your zip code, etc., as part of a systematic effort to deny welfare to everyone. But Social Security based programmes are run directly by the federal government and should be immune to this.

Also other things like relocating offices to light industrial parks in the suburbs far from the city centre and public transit to "save money", and having them open from 10 AM to 3 PM and suchlike.

[Enigma]

Wait, how the fuck is it that you're not already on disability? You should be able to at least get partial disability while working. You need to call a social worker or the disability office unless I'm greatly mistaken.

Imagine living in the U.S. as an almost deaf immigrant. My hearing took a sharp decline since moving here. The only thing I qualify for the moment is to get help from the Bureau for Vocational Rehabilitation. They are supposed to help people with disabilities get jobs that works around their disabilities. Supposed to, but in my case, I've been with them for three years and so far I'm on my fourth caseworker (keep getting bumped from one to another with the recent being this week.) and have had two hearing tests. That's it. They've said that they could get me a cochlear implant but want me to get an evaluation done, even though I've told my caseworker that the doctor after my first hearing test told me I qualify for a cochlear implant. They still want me to get an evaluation done and that means another hearing test besides the consult with the specialist and this time I'd have to pay for it. No dice, since I can't afford it. They're dragging their feet, delaying help and stonewalling any attempts to go ahead.

I've got a min wage job but that is not enough for my wife and I to live on (she can't work but isn't disabled enough for disability payments and we both live with her parents. *shudder*).

I need to find a better paying job because I'm going nuts living with my in-laws. (I've resorted to occasionally scratching the bottom of my right calf until it bleeds as a way to distract myself from wanting to toss my in-laws through the walls. Those scratches are becoming scars.) Fun times, right?

[PainRack]

Perhaps the wording "Comfortable" is a bit misleading and is skewing the discussion on what I think is a valid point by the writer, I disagree with the idea of using the whole welfare bill in 1 big lump to solve it but it's a good way to frame the extreme end of a possible other solution.
.

I said this earlier, and I echo Mr Tickle point here.

Unless there some other article written by this guy,the word 'comfortable' here is throwing off what is a salient point. The author is arguing that welfare programs aim to make poverty manageable, instead of aiming to lift people out of poverty, an entirely salient point.

I'm not sure what the word I will choose to describe a rebuttal, but my question would be, is it necessarily relevant???!? He's aiming to frame the debate in a manner that the US anti poverty programs are not doing enough to improve the general economic situation that will lift people out of poverty, but it might also be argued that they are. Will someone offer more details?

[PKRudeBoy]

Comfortable, as others have said, is probably not the right word to use. Less horrible, maybe, or perhaps not quite as terrible as it could be, but I have to agree with Surlethe about the minimum income. If there was a base that any American citizen could be guaranteed, then if some people go and spend their guaranteed minimum income on drugs, then fuck them, but the people that are actually trying to make a better life for themselves will be able to survive and possibly better themselves, that is absolutely worth spending the minuscule amount that it would cost compared to the amount that the top percent make.

[Broomstick]

$200.00/month is an excessive amount for food for one person, which is the max on food stamps.

No, it's not - that's about $6.66/day. Now, if you're young and you're not engaged in physical labor and you don't have a health problem that requires a high quality diet yeah, you can live on that but if you ARE engaged in physical labor good luck getting enough high quality protein and vitamins out of that along with sufficient calories, and if you have something like diabetes you can't live on white rice and beans without fucking up your blood sugar.

The only reason my household could survive on the max food allowance for two (which is $367/month, or $6.11 per day) was because we had a big garden, and my employer bought me lunch most days.

So... how do people get fat on food stamps? Soup kitchens. Particularly if you live in an area where there is an abundance of them you can get plenty of carb-heavy foods, sugar-laden foods, and basically stuff ideal for putting on weight and/or screwing up your blood sugar.

If you have diabetes, gluten intolerance, food allergies, or anything else that affects your diet you are screwed. That's because quality protein is typically the most expensive part of the meal. That's because fresh vegetables are relatively expensive, too, unless you live somewhere like Southern California, which most poor people don't. If you live in a food desert and have to shop at the local convenience store you're screwed because the prices there are high on everything.

[Broomstick]

Actually, I believe we established that through barter the $200 in food stamps a person recieves can be turned into almost anything from toilet paper to drugs and alcohol or whatever.

True, but then that leaves the problem of getting adequate food.

Frankly, I think it would make more sense to allow toilet paper, soap, deodarant, and other very basic hygiene products to be included in the "food stamp" purchases, or have a parallel program giving an allowance for those essentials as well, but then I also believe in such nonsense as a national health system.

I know plenty of people who have jobs - good jobs - and do not own a computer.

I'm willing to bet most of them had those really good jobs before computers became so ubiquitous. Good luck applying for a job at a big box store or just about anywhere without an e-mail address these days.

You are correct there are other locations to access to the internet, such as libraries, but that just underlines how essential it has become these days.

iPads are less functional than most laptops, and despite your assertion, no, they are not cheaper. If you are talking generational parity you can get several laptops brand new for around $300 versus $500 for a baseline (non-mini)Ipad. Even pre-owned or refurbished you're looking at around $300+ for a functional ipad. Google it.

Actually, I googled a couple for $199. If you don't insist on an Apple brand you can get them in the $100-150 range.

You can probably get this stuff even cheaper at some flea markets, but it's probably stolen.

A used/refurbished smartphone not only gives you phone, it gives you access to e-mail and the internet.

The point i'm making is these aren't cheap devices. Many people not on welfare don't feel that they can afford them. Thus people on welfare having them is quite a kick in the teeth to those people don't you think?

Only if the better off people haven't stopped to think this through.

First not every poor person has been poor all their life. When I lost my job in 2007 I went from middle class to poor overnight, yet I still had my vehicles (paid off), computer (acquired years earlier), nice clothes (ditto), and so forth. Durable goods are just that, durable.

Second, you can buy a lot of shit cheap if you're willing to buy used. A lot of poor women wearing designer stuff picked it up at the Goodwill or Salvation army. Better off folks who donate out of their closet, where do they think their used Gucci and Prada end up?

Third, people of different income levels have different priorities. That wealthier who could, actually, afford such things "can't" because they've got different priorities. They have the money, but they spend it on something else (a nicer car, vacations, dental veneers, organic vegetables and imported water, whatever).

Then there is this concept of "gifts", often from people referred to as "friends", which poor people have, too. (Actually, poor people might have larger social networks than some wealthier folks because a strong and diverse people network is a survival asset when you're poor). When my old computer died in 2009 I couldn't afford another one and had taken to using the ones at the library. Friends actually bought me a new computer system and had it delivered to my door that Christmas. I couldn't afford one, but got one anyway - are you saying I should have refused that gift because someone else might be offended that I, a poor person on food stamps, was given a computer?

By the way, I heard later most of the donations to the computer fund were 5-10 dollars. I have a lot of friends, what can I say?

I believe an assistance program should be providing means for people to get off the assistance requirement. Job training, child care assistance so they can go to work or school, etc.

OK... so what about those who CAN'T get off assistance? Some people are just never going to be employed, not because they're paralyzed in a corner but because they're too dysfunctional mentally/socially.

And what do you do when there are 5-7 job seekers for every actual job opening out there? Make those folks as miserable as you can, you can't get a job if there are no jobs to be had. That's the way it's been for the past few years, more people looking for jobs than there are job openings. Should the able-bodied poor then be made miserable and starving to force them to acquire jobs that don't exist?

I don't advocate a life of luxury by any means, but "mere survival" will only build resentment. If nothing else, the poor do require some form of entertainment and these days that means either a TV or a computer. That doesn't mean a top of the line system, or necessarily cable/satellite (personally, I think Netflix is a better bargain), but if you don't give people some means to occupy their down time they'll find something that fits, and it may not be beneficial for society at large when they do.

[energiewende]

And what do you do when there are 5-7 job seekers for every actual job opening out there? Make those folks as miserable as you can, you can't get a job if there are no jobs to be had.

The Victorians had a solution to this problem, called the workhouse. Everyone had a job waiting if he wanted one, but it offered a lower standard of living than even the worst real jobs because of the prison-like residency requirement in order to continue receiving relief.

Of course the worst real jobs today are much better than the worst real jobs in 1850, so one modernised solution might be the minimum wage machine:



It's sufficiently tedious that no one would choose it over a job but provides a comparable income to a bad job.

[Surlethe]

You've mentioned this before and it always rings a bell, so at the risk of sounding like a total idiot is this similar to the solution Friedman suggested in a book decades ago? Its interesting to me because putting aside people arguing over how much poor people should suffer or whatever, simple systems always avoid targeting or overlap problems for the service and have much easier oversight and enforcement.

Stark, you always sound like a total idiot. Yes, it's very similar to Friedman's negative income tax. IIRC what Friedman proposed was a flat 30% income tax on top of a guaranteed income of something like $5,000. I'd like to see a progressive tax with brackets of, say, 0%, 30%, and 50%. I'd also like to see the brackets and the guaranteed minimum indexed to per-capita nominal GDP. To my knowledge, indexing to NGDP is my own invention and deals with both systemic work-incentives and inflation.

In any case, one libertarian criticism that liberals really should internalize is exactly your point, that simple systems avoid targeting and overlap problems and have easier oversight and enforcement. As the CBO report I posted earlier shows, the current US system has major overlap problems with its means-tested cessation. Obamacare* is only going to make some of these problems worse. The OP's criticism of welfare is one of targeting; we're not targeting welfare to eliminate poverty, we're targeting it to keep people in poverty a little more comfortable.

You work in Australia's welfare system, right? Do you have any insights?

*Hell, speaking of simple, compare Obamacare and Canada's socialized health insurance. Obamacare's what, 500 pages of tangled regulatory changes? Canada's law is all of 20 pages, and only that long because they printed it twice, once in English, once in French. Just based on that, I can predict with some confidence which system is going to perform better.

[aerius]

*Hell, speaking of simple, compare Obamacare and Canada's socialized health insurance. Obamacare's what, 500 pages of tangled regulatory changes? Canada's law is all of 20 pages, and only that long because they printed it twice, once in English, once in French. Just based on that, I can predict with some confidence which system is going to perform better.

Over 2000 pages, though I hear they got it down to a bit under 1000 after they signed it into law, reformated it, and stripped out the legalese. Apparently it clocks in at over 2 million words, which is nearly 4 times as long as War and Peace.

[Simon_Jester]

Unfortunately, the anti-"socialist" faction of American politics, using libertarian rhetoric to justify their actions, is so opposed to a simple 20-page single-payer system that we were left with a 500-page book inevitably. The irony is not lost on me.

Fixing overlap and so on with a guaranteed minimum income might very well work- I am not opposed, but I don't expect it to work as long as the leading force in calls for "welfare reform" are people whose idea of 'reform' is motivated more by 19th-century "fuck the poor" than by 21st-century "make the system achieve the same goal, but more efficiently."

And what do you do when there are 5-7 job seekers for every actual job opening out there? Make those folks as miserable as you can, you can't get a job if there are no jobs to be had.

The Victorians had a solution to this problem, called the workhouse. Everyone had a job waiting if he wanted one, but it offered a lower standard of living than even the worst real jobs because of the prison-like residency requirement in order to continue receiving relief.

This is a crappy solution

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ouses.html

Oh, wait, you say, that was just because the Victorians were mean, and with 20th century ethics we'd be more civilized and not let babies freeze to death for being unprofitable to the workhouse owner? Yeah, right- you're still mirroring the same ideas that led them to do that sort of thing. You evoke this image of masses of "able-bodied poor" who could work but for whatever reason aren't, and so have to be given an incentive to find a 'real job' as soon as one becomes available by making the workhouse suck as much as possible.

Since "you've got to be cruel to be kind" is one of the built-in premises of the system there, anyone can predict that the system will become profoundly cruel over time.

Of course the worst real jobs today are much better than the worst real jobs in 1850, so one modernised solution might be the minimum wage machine:



It's sufficiently tedious that no one would choose it over a job but provides a comparable income to a bad job.

At that point you're probably better sticking these people in front of computer terminals to fill out job applications...

[Dr. Trainwreck]

Unfortunately, the anti-"socialist" faction of American politics, using libertarian rhetoric to justify their actions, is so opposed to a simple 20-page single-payer system that we were left with a 500-page book inevitably. The irony is not lost on me.

It's not irony when your favorite book is Atlas fucking Shrugged. Greek law is also bloated to hell and back, and we're the most dysfunctional state in the Euro because of it.

[energiewende]

This is a crappy solution

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ouses.html

Oh, wait, you say, that was just because the Victorians were mean, and with 20th century ethics we'd be more civilized and not let babies freeze to death for being unprofitable to the workhouse owner? Yeah, right- you're still mirroring the same ideas that led them to do that sort of thing. You evoke this image of masses of "able-bodied poor" who could work but for whatever reason aren't, and so have to be given an incentive to find a 'real job' as soon as one becomes available by making the workhouse suck as much as possible.

Since "you've got to be cruel to be kind" is one of the built-in premises of the system there, anyone can predict that the system will become profoundly cruel over time.

Workhouses didn't "suck as much as possible", they just sucked as much as bad Victorian jobs, which by current standards is fairly sucky. I'm not sure workhouse is actually a worse place to work than, say, a hand operated coal mine apart from the fact that the latter pays a lot more and lets you go to the pub at the end of the day.

Precisely the problem is that there are lots of able bodied people who could work but either cannot find jobs (due to labour market rigidity - not entirely caused by state interventions) or choose not to (because claiming benefits is easier than working a bad job for similar money; not sure this is the case in US but is in some places). A system that means one cannot get relief without working is not a punishment, it just makes the relief never preferable to having a job.

Of course the worst real jobs today are much better than the worst real jobs in 1850, so one modernised solution might be the minimum wage machine:



It's sufficiently tedious that no one would choose it over a job but provides a comparable income to a bad job.

At that point you're probably better sticking these people in front of computer terminals to fill out job applications...

The problem with this is that it relies on bureaucrats determining who is "really trying" to get a job, who is just unlucky, who is playing the system. Either you give bureaucrats such discretion in which case you end up with pregnant women sometimes being thrown onto the street, or you don't in which case you get a permanent welfare class. The minimum wage machine seems a good compromise.

Unfortunately, the anti-"socialist" faction of American politics, using libertarian rhetoric to justify their actions, is so opposed to a simple 20-page single-payer system that we were left with a 500-page book inevitably. The irony is not lost on me.

The anti-socialists here being Obama? The people who voted against Obamacare may favour the 0-page solution.

[Elfdart]

I think there is some merit to this concept. I've heard countless stories from friends who will be grocery shopping, see a lady tagging along with 3-4 kids buying lobster and steak and paying for it with government issued welfare debit cards. And heard stories about people on welfare feeding steak rather than dogfood to their dogs because they could buy steak with welfare money.

Anecdotal? Sure, but the fact that it happens indicates a problem with the system.

No, it indicates your friends are full of shit, and if you take their rehash of one of Von Reagan's favorite zombie lies seriously, you're full of shit, too.

It is rather infuriating when working people see people on welfare eating better than they do. And this is but one example of a way where money could be spent in a more productive manner.

That's odd, since a number of "working people" are themselves drawing public assistance.

The idea of providing absolute basic neccessities to everyone isn't the worst idea in the world. I mean, sure its a form of Communism, but provide some baseline nutritional, housing, medical to every citizen would at least give them a platform to build upon.

Because you can't provide food, shelter, medicine etc without nationalizing the means of production. Are you really this stupid?

I look at it this way: Which is better, a deadbeat living a modest life on welfare or a deadbeat dead in a gutter? This question is also an indication of cuntitude.

For the Teabaggers, the latter, obviously.

The Victorians had a solution to this problem, called the workhouse. Everyone had a job waiting if he wanted one, but it offered a lower standard of living than even the worst real jobs because of the prison-like residency requirement in order to continue receiving relief.

Of course the worst real jobs today are much better than the worst real jobs in 1850, so one modernised solution might be the minimum wage machine:

It's sufficiently tedious that no one would choose it over a job but provides a comparable income to a bad job.

It's not nearly as tedious as your trolling bullshit. Go fuck yourself already.

My preferred solution is a negative income tax, where every person - man, woman, and child - is guaranteed an income of at least 30% of per-capita GDP. Let's not even bother with mandating how much must be spent on food or anything else, or with building and staffing a Department of Housing; let people figure out what's best for them and their families, and give them the cash so that they have options.

How would the Treasury Department go about it? Send out weekly/monthly checks based on reported earnings? Or as a lump sum at tax time?

[Simon_Jester]

Unfortunately, the anti-"socialist" faction of American politics, using libertarian rhetoric to justify their actions, is so opposed to a simple 20-page single-payer system that we were left with a 500-page book inevitably. The irony is not lost on me.

It's not irony when your favorite book is Atlas fucking Shrugged. Greek law is also bloated to hell and back, and we're the most dysfunctional state in the Euro because of it.

I disagree- it is irony.

It's ironic that by opposing "bloated, inefficient state regulation," I can end up bypassing a simple, efficient form of state regulation, and getting exactly the sort of bloat and waste I oppose.

Now, I may expect exactly that wasteful bloat from government, because of my prejudices. But it's still a self-fulfilling prophecy, which is about as good a working example of irony as I can think of.

Workhouses didn't "suck as much as possible", they just sucked as much as bad Victorian jobs, which by current standards is fairly sucky. I'm not sure workhouse is actually a worse place to work than, say, a hand operated coal mine apart from the fact that the latter pays a lot more and lets you go to the pub at the end of the day.

Wasn't your own argument that the workhouse was designed to be so bad that anyone in it would seek out other paying work instead? If so, doesn't this contradict your own argument?

Precisely the problem is that there are lots of able bodied people who could work but either cannot find jobs (due to labour market rigidity - not entirely caused by state interventions) or choose not to (because claiming benefits is easier than working a bad job for similar money; not sure this is the case in US but is in some places). A system that means one cannot get relief without working is not a punishment, it just makes the relief never preferable to having a job.

I would like to see actual statistics on the number of idle benefit-claimers out there. Economists' theories suggest that plenty of homo economicus specimens would become such people. I'm not sure they're that thick on the ground.

And frankly, given the history of ideas like "let's make welfare conditional on working in a workhouse!" I'm suspicious. For 200 years people have been pointing to supposed masses of able-bodied idle poor who aren't even bothering to take the available jobs, who need to be put to work by the welfare organization to make them seek work that will get them off the welfare rolls.

Show me the numbers, not the rhetoric.

The problem with this is that it relies on bureaucrats determining who is "really trying" to get a job, who is just unlucky, who is playing the system. Either you give bureaucrats such discretion in which case you end up with pregnant women sometimes being thrown onto the street, or you don't in which case you get a permanent welfare class. The minimum wage machine seems a good compromise.

On the contrary- it's a complete waste of time; all it's likely to accomplish is to stop those people from seeking other work, or from spending that time raising their children, or doing pretty much anything else imaginable.

Why would we want people doing useless things to 'earn' a welfare check? Do we actually see that many random idlers exploiting the system?

Unfortunately, the anti-"socialist" faction of American politics, using libertarian rhetoric to justify their actions, is so opposed to a simple 20-page single-payer system that we were left with a 500-page book inevitably. The irony is not lost on me.

The anti-socialists here being Obama? The people who voted against Obamacare may favour the 0-page solution.

There were about three major factions in the 2009 health care debate:

1) Those who oppose all national public health care: the "pay or die" wing, if you're being uncharitable, which I am because I resent what they've done to some people I care for.
2) Those who think the current system and its inability to provide medical care to poor people is bad, but who do NOT want to significantly change the system's basic operating principles. This is sometimes a muddle-headed position, sometimes not, with a lot of shades of gray in it.
3) Those who want a national, government-funded system of single-payer health insurance, like practically all other developed countries have.

Obama started the debate vacillating between (2) and (3), leaning toward (2). There were not nearly enough votes in Congress to pass (3), though, so everyone involved who actually wanted a change in the system started pushing for (2).


Now granted, if (1) had gotten their way we'd have no change at all. In which case we still have a massive complicated bureaucracy, it's just private instead of public, and huge numbers of people are getting sick and dying, and the per-patient cost of the system continues to explode.

But because any change in the system required the would-be changers to pile up every possible vote, including some who practically had to be pled with and wrestled into doing it, the result was about as compromised as possible. Compromise is all very well, but it almost never makes a law shorter or simpler.

[Terralthra]

What's even more sad is that in real terms, the requirement that employers provide health insurance to full-time employees is a job killer. Part-time/"contract" work is up by millions of jobs in the past five years, an acceleration of an earlier trend. Full-time employees cost proportionately more salary per utile than part-time workers, because of the benefits that - to employers - are actually costs. A single-payer health care system (and safety net/socialized retirement system that effectively covered everyone) would vastly decrease the current incentive employers have to not hire full-time unless they have to. No one is making this argument, because what passes for the left in America is largely retarded.