On a national or even global scale I try to avoid generalizations like this because trivially they don't lead to good policy outcomes. It's almost a little like stock picking. If 5/100 hedge funds make a positive return over the year, my first thought isn't "the other 95 refused to work to better themselves".
It's easy to understand this with hedge funds, but people commonly make this mistake when talking about human beings. You wouldn't be taken seriously if you said those hedge funds lost money because "they refused to work hard". I feel most people are the same way - I don't think any rational actor refuses to better themselves, rather it is a fallacy we tell ourselves to explain why things the way they are. I've seen plenty of "hard working" people relegated to poverty because their kid got sick.
Finally, the best solution is not to focus on individual funds, but on the index. Providing a better baseline for all companies leads to a better overall index and having a strong economy involves having a section of it the "wastes" a lot of money investing in the in the future.
Because...yes. So much yes. Even had this person engaged in crime ('to feed his family!'), but still come out of it on top, we'd be saying "see? Even with those slip ups, he did the right thing most of the time and came out on top", but then we turn around and three strikes, lock someone else up for decades. And we don't know the people who failed, despite doing everything 'right', who died homeless and malnourished.
This difference between individual advice and group-level policymaking (mentioned elsewhere in this thread by chmod600) accounts for a lot of talking past one another in political debates. They are two totally separate levels of analysis.
To be clear I'm not saying there isn't a level of difference in talent or work ethic; what I'm arguing is that viewing the world that way makes for terrible government policy. When someone says something like "welfare makes people lazy", they are making the mistake you are. Somehow the imaginary "real life work" is directly correlated with effort, but actual finance jobs are not.
There are successful companies and products that don't seem to have a lot of either behind them beyond the initial work to find a successful niche, that they've leveraged to great success. And companies and projects have failed despite having both of those because of circumstances outside of their control.
Just like people, companies are products of their environment. Why -doesn't- someone work hard? Or make the right choices? Because either of their environment, what they've learned, or because of who they were born as. Neither of those is under their control. And even if they do, and it doesn't pan out, why didn't it pan out? Again, factors outside of their control.
Perhaps there are some fund managers out there that are just like "Yep, it's a rigged system, I'm going to be the one getting rich off rigging it", but I haven't met one personally yet.
I think everyone is deserving of not living in poverty. Even "lazy" people.
If you don't believe in state sanctioned murder, then we have to clothe and feed and house people that commited horrible crimes.
Surely if a rapist deserves to be fed, so does an innocent person who can't find a job? Being useless is not a crime.
Also i dispute this qualification as lazy - some people are disorganised, not very clever, etc. You can only claim laziness if we had like a right to a job no matter what.
The State actively deprived the rapist of their ability to act autonomously to care for themselves, so they are obligated to do so on their behalf. The State (typically) does not actively deprive an innocent person who can't find a job of their autonomy. (There are some arguable scenarios in which they do, however, such as excessive fines, but obligation to pay those are dependent on ability, and feeding ones-self supercedes that in most jurisdictions.)
> some people are disorganised, not very clever, etc. You can only claim laziness if we had like a right to a job no matter what.
It is ethical to care for those who are unable to care for themselves. It's not as clearly ethical to force someone else to care for those who are unable to care for themselves.
Calling the unemployed lazy is a lie untill you offered them a job and they refused.
And you would be okay with that? You're advocating for actual slavery of inmates?
A free has has to eat, because of the nature of the universe, but he is free. He can choose his job, has recourses with his employers, etc.
Your statement implies that it's the government which gives everyone the deal "work or starve", but that's simply not the case. The free man is simply existing in the world, surviving as he sees fit. By taking away his capability to survive on his own, you have the ethical responsibility to feed him.
These ideas are preposterous by modern standards, but people can and have come up with arrangements where a person works from jail without becoming a slave.
Can a 'free man' survive 'however he sees fit'?
You can't even walk around 'freely', some guy in Uk was trying to cross the country naked and spent 2 years in prison.
Build a house in the woods, plow the land, hunt without a license, and someone will show up to deal with you. Sing a song in the street? You are breaking copyright and some public nuisance or antisocial behaviour laws. You built something with your own hands and sold it? Might have broken some patents.
About the only thing a free man may do is work for a man freer than him. I appreciate we have a civilised society, but compared to free day of olde, it's a total straigh jacket.
So no, these situations are not equivalent but they are comparable enough that I don't buy the categorical moral judgement you are casting.
However, when it's the government that comes and asks you to give them $100, so that they could in turn give it to Joe, an acquaintance of Steve living the same lifestyle that you have never even met, somehow now it is your moral obligation to pay up, as Joe clearly deserves your money. How does that work?
You're also ignoring the fact that someone who is eligible for this kind of social security and spends it all on booze is probably unwell and needs treatment for addiction and the conditions that cause it. In many cases, the cause of addiction is poverty itself.
This fear of being "scammed" by the Joes and Steves of the world is completely irrational. The government is taking a big chunk of your money anyways. What's being proposed is that instead of spending tax dollars on killing poor people abroad, you spend it on helping poor people at home, regardless of their work ethic.
So, say government increases the income limit for one of the lower tax brackets by $5,000. That's great for people who make more than that, which btw isn't all poor people, but at the same time it also gives more money to everyone who was already doing okay. Meaning inflation will soon eat up the extra money and we're right back where we started.
In order to help the poor with upgrading to non-poor, the government has to explicitly avoid extending that benefit to the rest of society, has to continue taking from middle and upper income people. It needs to be targeted, and tax cuts are a great way to target middle/upper classes while helping poor people less.
If my alcoholic friend from college came to me because he was short on rent or needed to buy them groceries, I wouldn't give them $100. I'd offer to buy them groceries or write a check to the landlord directly.
The government can do the same thing. If someone needs healthcare or education and can't afford it, pay for the healthcare or education. A social net doesn't mean a blank check.
Before you make soap box comments you should be aware of reality. You might think I'm arguing against welfare benefits but I am not. The whole time I watched this state of affairs I seethed because it was middle class tax payers making up the difference in pay for walmart and other corporations who pay poverty wages.
If society agrees to give $100 to Steve then you have no say in how that move is spent.
If you think it's better not to give to Steve anything and you lobby to change the law and are successful. When Andre is affected by this change he decides to make up the difference by breaking into your place and killing you. At least Steve doesn't have his hookers right?
Because to a first approximation, that's not what ever happens. "Steve" is far more a political talking point than a real person.
Neither of course! Either believing your own experience to generalize well or believing someone random on the internet would be crazy talk.
What you should believe is the research on this, which admittedly is difficult with anything this politicized. What I base it on is a combination of reading some of that (though I'm no expert) and knowing some people quite well who have had state level responsibility for programs of this kind.
Fraud, and "Steves" certainly exist, but it seems that the numbers are small enough they don't have much systemic impact, there are many much bigger issues.
That's what I meant by "to a first approximation"; not that it doesn't exist, but the effect isn't of 1st order importance.
Is this some fear that if we provide basic supports for everyone that "too many" people would not move beyond basics? That really seems unlikely.
Your claims that we have "more than enough" are unproven, imo.
Let's take housing. Is your claim that there is enough good housing around for everybody, or that it could be built quickly? How quickly - how many houses are needed, by your estimate? How many building workers are available, and how fast could they build? How many heavy machines (cranes, trucks, bulldozuers...) are available on short notice, to speed up the building?
I don't think many such machines are sitting around idly, and the same goes for construction workers. That means housing is already being built at maximum capacity, and yet there still aren't enough affordable houses.
Just because Apple can make billions of dollars of surplus, doesn't mean there is the equivalant of building machines sitting around idly, waiting to be hired with Apple's money (taking Apple as an example of a rich surplus company).
In fact that money is just debt, literally IOUs - "I owe you". Apple selling an iPhone to people for 1000$ means they trust those people will someday repay them with something worth roughly 1000$. That something could be a building machine. But that machine does not have to exist yet - at the point of sale, all there is is Apple's trust in "the people" to at some point provide that building machine.
Now if Apple were to say today "screw it, we are spending all our money on building houses for the poor", it would probably result in the equivalent of a bank run. Apple would try to rent or buy 10000 construction machines in a single go, but that many machines don't exist. So "the people" would have to go oopsie and say "actually, you can not get a bulldozer for your money".
Furthermore, suppose you were to budget 3000 calories of basic food for every person in Uk, you'd find it's a tiny fraction of national budget.
We had a 'homeless' guy build his house in a forest, but ofcourse the government showed up to remove him. Many people would sort themselves out if we did not prevent them from doing so.
The narrative of shortage is an obsolete idea from the 19th century. We produce more food, steel, oil, and every other real industrial good than we know what to do with. These discussions are like fighting WW2 with medieval tactics.
Today's economy is not limited by production like it was 100 years ago, its limited by consumption. By growing inequality and pushing people into poverty, the '1st world' is reducing consumption and destroying it's economy.
Think about it - how can we have abandoned factories, unemployed workers and surplus of all materials?
Think what 'productivity growth' means - if 40 hours a week was enough to feed and clothe everyone 70 years ago, and productivity went up 400%, how many hours do we need now?
That why we have useless hobs, and 60% of employees believe their job is useless.
The problem is not about morally corupt rich people being in charge, its about morons being in charge. If they were clever but evil, at least the system would not crash every 8 few years
I am sick of hearing about poverty as a growing problem. It simply isn't.
Median income, and the lowest income quintile, have grown steadily. The percent of Americans living in poverty has been declining. Median wealth is still lower than it was before the 2008 crisis, but it was growing strongly before and has grown strongly since the Great Recession.
All trends are upwards. Do not confuse growing inequality with growing poverty. Some are getting richer faster than others, but statistically everyone is getting richer.
Is there a specific metric in mind when you say people are being pushed into poverty? Or is it something you have just heard elsewhere?
However, even though the overall rates were returning to flat before the pandemic - the percent of people below 50% of the poverty line in the US has been historically higher by 50% than it has been in history since the beginning of the measure.
https://poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/what-current-poverty-rate-un...
If you're an HN reader, you have to realize that for the most part you are in an incredibly fortunate bubble of being in a job that is in demand in a financially supported sector of our economy - it is not that way for many Americans (or many other citizens of other nations).
Today even an "average poor" person can live better than a king 400 years ago.
It shows about a 12% drop in homeless people 2007-2019. The US population overall grew just under 10%, too, so the drop on a per capita basis is higher than that. I imagine 2020 led to a large increase again, though. I also can't vet their sources without registering so take it with a grain of salt.
Specifically in UK in-work poverty has been going up and up for the past ten years.
I don't think number of houses is the problem, either. People need houses in certain places. That's why homeless hang out in San Francisco where a flat costs 1 million dollars, while a couple of hundred of miles away it would presumably be much, much cheaper.
As for your production, it still all costs energy, and getting energy also costs labor (and even wars, remember the wars about oil).
Abandoned factories simply have turned out to be not economically viable. If you think you can do better, why don't you pool your money with some friends, buy such a factory and start it up again?
You merely display the typical arrogance of socialist who always believe they could run everything better with a "planning economy". And when they finally get to try it out in the real world, they get a major painful reality check.
Take your factories: since they were not economically viable, it would be wasteful and a net loss for society and the economy to start them up again.
You are partially right about increased productivity, and it actually has improved the lives of many people. I personally am very glad that I don't have to spend my waking hours doing hard labor on a field just so that I can harvest some potatoes. Most people in the west have enough to eat, and clothes they can wear, many even have a nice smartphone on top.
Some resources are still limited, though, such as nice places to live in.
And the world population has also grown by a couple of billion people compared to 100 years ago. Your job that fed a family at the beginning of the 20th century still feeds a family today, only in China.
You post is narrow minded and presumptious - I am not socialist, we don't have rent controls in London, and there are economic terms other than 'socialist' and 'capitalist'. Try 'Shumpeterian'
But if you want to go on believing that the only choices are socialism or economic collapse every 8 years, go on.
About 10 million cars are produced in the USA every year. An RV/Trailer type thing is like a car - so quite easily you could imagine producing that many of these 'tiny houses' every year with car style factories.
About 600k people are homeless in the USA. That's about equal to the number of RV's produced every year.
So that solves 'physical' homelessness quite quickly if there was an effort to. (that disregards that some homeless choose to homeless out of mental illness etc)
Many have emotional problems.
Most people complain about their jobs, or multiple jobs, but know it provides so much more than money. Half the people I know would have 0 friends, O social life, if not for those lousy jobs.
It’s ironic you say the government doesn’t have infinite money to spend.
We are about to throw close to two trillion out of a helicopter. There is not a person, well one, on my block in Marin County that has not benefited financially from the virus, but will be getting $1400 to blow.
I am worried about inflation.
I suspect clever lazy people without barriers to social or economic participation usually seek out, and often obtain, jobs where they're paid to do approximately nothing. Lazy people, assuming that category is even meaningful, aren't masochists who want to live in poverty. There's more going on there.
Without the job, they would have extra 8 hours (plus commute time) a day to meet their non-job friends.
You can argue that there may be no actual lazy people, but that is another discussion.
"We are about to throw close to two trillion out of a helicopter."
Are you really not aware that the bill for that will simply come later (as it is a debt taken out on behalf of the population), and in the process of creating those two trillion, existing money has already been devalued?
Unless my physics course misled me, no, it isn't.
They create the money so they literally do. Doesn't mean it shouldn't be deployed wisely of course.
Society has limited resources. Until we manage the post-scarcity utopia, I would prefer my tax dollars go to someone who will use them to build a better life.
Perhaps you find that defensible, perhaps you find that appalling, but argue that position, not one that isn't true.
this is kind of reductive claim. in one sense, it's trivially true that the earth has more raw resources than humans can consume even over the course of centuries. AFAIK it's also true that, under the current system of organization, the global economy produces enough finished goods to feed, clothe, and house everyone (though people often bring up logistical caveats here, eg, distributing stuff in places where there are no paved roads or airfields).
the real question here is whether we would still have that quantity of finished goods under a different system of organization with different incentives. to be clear, I don't discount the possibility that we might have even more! but it seems more likely to me that people would simply produce less stuff if they didn't get to keep the surplus by default.
Of course people can keep the surplus. Some of it. But we're a far, far cry from the point where people will stop working when only getting a percentage of their labor's worth (or their parent's labor's worth, as is often the case).
some caveats apply to this offhand quip (very different tax laws and perhaps even widespread evasion meant almost no one was paying an effective tax of 90%, regardless of actual income). I suspect you know this.
I'm sure there's a lot of slack in the tax brackets. I doubt we are close to a laffer curve inflection point. all I'm saying is I'm not convinced by the style of argument that goes "we already have enough food for everyone; we just need to radically reorganize the economy and then no one will go hungry!". more analysis is needed.
Over 20% of the money in circulation in the US was printed last year. i.e. the pot is much bigger now. Also, while tax rates were high back then, loopholes were proportionately larger!
The kind of poverty where you starve and have to wear rags is becoming rare even in Africa. From this point of view, the system has clearly worked and the pendulum even went too far, with obesity becoming a serious problem in places that aren't typically considered rich (Mexico, Brazil).
Housing is a different problem. We have a housing crisis because many people want to live in a few select urban hotspots of the world.
What you call incentive is really compulsion, just of a more extreme form.
In that context, why focus on giving small portions of wealth to those in poverty (even if they aren't working as hard as you think they ought to)?
- it wouldn't be liquid, so you'd be giving part ownership in assets
- the value would be slightly less than median yearly income per recipient. At a pretty sizeable 5% average return, the individuals would net about $2,000 a year.
- if they chose to sell the assets, they would end up with about one year's median income and then it's gone
I'm not sure how much money you think lives up at the top, but redistributing it is not sustainable, and it's certainly not enough to magically pull everyone out of poverty indefinitely. (Or even for very long, at that.)
There are a ton of reasonable discussions to be had about imbalanced power structures between socioeconomic groups, but this whole redistribution thing is just a fantasy.
One can look at a million/billionaire and say, "oh, this person has 50 cars. That's way too many cars for one person to have! Let's give them away to people who actually need cars!" So you seize them and give them away—along with the other 12,000 super wealthy people that own 50 or more cars—and then you have... 200,000 people who still don't have cars.
For groups that preach so frequently about global and ecological sustainability, there's a disturbing blind spot for economic sustainability. I think that's more a feature of envy than responsibility, unfortunately.
What you've done is described a position ("redistributing all of the top 5%'s wealth at once"), described the problems with it, and then criticized my obvious blind spots due to this oversight. Forgotten in this tale is that I never held that position in the first place! You are criticizing your own invented argument.
Also, even if I did favor redistributing all wealth in the top 5% of families, a simple back-of-napkin calculation shows that your argument is wrong.
107 * 10^12 (total networth of US households [0]) * 0.619 (share owned by top 5% [0]) * 0.05 (rate of return) / (315*10^6 (population of US)) = $10k/yr for every person in the US just off of the returns from that wealth, which is 5x your estimate. The US Census poverty threshold is making below $13k/yr. If that wealth was held for you until you were 18, that would be every young person starting their life with $180k in savings, which is another $9k/yr with 0.05 rate of return.
Obviously, there's a whole host of issues with this, including some of the ones you mentioned, and (of course) price inflation, but I am not sure how you calculated your numbers.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_Unite...
upvoted
People just do not understand this. You could take away every penny from every billionaire in this country. If you sold everything they had, you would not have enough money to fund the federal government for even one year. And now the money is gone; you can no longer collect tax from the ex-wealthy.
Nevertheless, "just tax the rich" is treated as the solution to all problems. I guess people hear all the talk about the "top one tenth of one percent" and they imagine literally bottomless bank accounts.
To take that away from people is truly dehumanizing, but sounds like a typical socialist scheme (destroy the family, destroy individualism, everything has to be the same).
It's better the 1 rich person is forced to consume that in his lifetime. By doing so that money is redistributed back to the economy, and his 3 kids are also productive.
In scenario 1 only 1 out 4 people work. In scenario 2, 4 out of 4 people work.
Also - it's hypocritical for 'pull yourself by your bootstraps' for children born poor, and 'guaranteed basic income' for children born rich. That is more dehumanizing than not being allowed to pass off inheritance.
> 1 rich person saving his money so his 3 children never have to work is bad for the economy.
"Your rights are bad for the economy, we are taking everything from you. Back to work, pleb".
I think you misread the sentiment. What a lot of us would like to see is a more meritocratic system, where children start off on more equal footing and either earn their wealth or not. But inherited works against that. It is difficult to listen to arguments against taxing the wealthy heavily "because they earned it" while at the same time hearing support for what amounts to aristocracy.
The idea that we have to come up with a good reason _not_ to heavily tax people is backwards. The only reason you need is that people have rights. A man owns what is his and you have absolutely no right to it.
This is all beside the pont anyway. Increasing tax revenue will not solve any of the problems you are trying to solve. As I said elsewhere, you could tax 100% of every billionaire in this country, leaving them homeless, and you would not have collected enough money to fund the federal government for even one year. You could sell off your entire "aristocracy" and it wouldn't make a dent. The strategy of "just spend more money" does not work.
And how are we to do that without taking money from somewhere and using it to help people up?
> The idea that we have to come up with a good reason _not_ to heavily tax people is backwards. The only reason you need is that people have rights. A man owns what is his and you have absolutely no right to it.
Case in point. You can't take money away from rich kids via inheritance tax (nevermind that they'd still have innumerable advantages from growing up in a wealthy household), you can't tax the wealthy, but you're somehow supposed to help poor children up anyway. Who's paying for that?
Furthermore, I disagree with the statement on the grounds that national infrastructure and protections are doubtless large contributors to anyone being able to amass that kind of wealth in the first place, therefore it is not unreasonable to expect that a portion of that wealth be contributed back.
I think you would find that to make everything equal, you would have to take children away from their parents at an early age. Because having caring, loving parents is also an advantage. At least so far not all kids in a school turn out the same, even thought they all have the same teachers and lessons. Must be the parents that make the difference.
I don't think that would be desirable. I don't want my children to be raised in a government institution to make them exactly the same as everybody else, just for the sake of an arbitrary metric ("equality" measured in some arbitrarily chosen terms).
In fact why not get rid of parents altogether, and create children in labs? I bet that is the socialist dream fulfilled.
(Sorry about the cheap comment - I couldn't resist)
Also, sorry, but I don't care how productive other people's kids are, or "the economy". I care about the well-being of my kids. yes, I want everybody to be happy if possible, but my kids have priority to me.
And what exactly is "hypocritical"? What are you referring to? You assume everybody should have the same starting position in life, and I reject that notion.
Children of course are not at fault for the actions of their parents (like if they are drug addicts and have an unwanted child they can't afford, the child is not to blame - but neither are other people's children or parents). But that doesn't mean every child should automatically get the same "starting money". This is not a game of monopoly.
As I said - people compete to give their children the best odds. That is not even unique to humans, it is true for all of nature.
If you take that away, why bother with anything? Why should you bother to get a good job to be able to support your family? Just fuck and live the good life, and dump your children on society to be taken care of.
Already in the west everybody gets a pretty good deal in the form of an education.
* There is a caveat that it should be a new investment rather than a purchase of the existing one, the latter is zero-sum.
Yeah, I disagree. We're talking about on the order of tens of millions of dollars or more being passed from one parent to one child.
> So you are only deserving of a life free of poverty (even if you're lazy) if your parents happened to be rich?
This is such a twisting of my words I am not even sure how to respond. Are you saying the only way out of poverty is to steal everything you want from the rich?
Everybody should have a fair chance, but people who worked harder should also be allowed to benefit. Why should anybody be entitled to the fruits of their labor?
1. We can tell them it's their own fault for not making great decisions when they were teenagers, and therefore, they deserve to remain stuck in a poverty trap for the rest of their lives
2. Or, we can acknowledge that they are now in a situation where hard work alone is unlikely to solve their problems. And we can provide them with the tools they need to help themselves, and also become more valuable assets to society. For example, subsidized/free college or job training. Free/subsidized childcare. Safe living environments. Better access to healthcare. Better public transit so they can actually get to work. Etc
So it's less about "refuse to work to better themselves" and more about correctly placing incentives on the growth path for individuals so that they become the kind of people who want to "better themselves".
Of course there are those who, provided any amount of support, will not become productive individuals and it makes sense to continuously evaluate for growth.
But it is beneficial to society and to each participant to offer a minimum childhood to adulthood transition experience that optimizes for productive adults.
Of course, this is usually only important for the poor because most wealthier people are better at bringing up children.
> The government can not and should not lift people out of poverty if those people refuse to work to better themselves.
3 of those 5 factors began with "As a youth..."
The government can and should help the youth lift themselves out of poverty regardless of the situations of their parents or other situations. They lack many rights that adults have, and in exchange for that, they deserve better support then demanding children should simply "work to better themselves."
The common mistake here, which I think you mostly avoided but didn't make explicit, is to believe that if someone didn't make it they didn't work hard or have good judgment.
It's also problematic how little good judgment we require of young people coming from most backgrounds, compared to underprivileged ones. There is also a common and mostly false trope that many/most poor people are lazy and that is why they are poor. The truth is at minimum more nuanced than that.
Currently, hard work is a prequisite. In order to achieve equility of opportunity, which would allow anyone to succeed, we need to provide for the "unlucky" scenarios people fall into. Access to childcare and education are two big things in particular that should be improved.
At some point automation will leave us in a place where many, if not most, people’s labor is literally worthless because they’re not mechanics or engineers. Then what? Should those people starve even as we live in a time of abundance instead of scarcity? At what point does this concept of deservedness do more harm than good?
Who do you think wakes up and thinks, "I love poverty. This life is so easy"?
Yes, because obviously what someone who won (and lost) millions of dollars needs is not money, but help and support.
Not to mention, by the construction of your own strawman, if they’ve won such a jackpot they’ve probably also then paid millions in taxes.
[1] https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2016/08/15/5-million-lotto-...
I'm curious to know your position on those who are homeless -- as if mental illness, systemic neglect, and abuse combined with skyrocketing housing costs such that even otherwise-able people are just a few missed paychecks away from foreclosure) are incidental, and it's really a result of being "lazy".
Being homeless would rob nearly every opportunity from you. I don't think it would be fair to dismiss those people as lazy, if all the hard work in the world wouldn't do them any good.
One of those "decisions" was avoiding prison. OP says people call him privileged, so he probably didn't belong to a race that is jailed disproportionately for crimes that white people are let off for.
a lot of folks on the street disagree
OP could as easily "made the wrong decisions", it's literally a crapshoot.
I don't mean to argue against a social safety net (free college in this example was certainly a good thing). I just mean to say that you can't discount the importance of hard work and good judgement. The government can not and should not lift people out of poverty if those people refuse to work to better themselves.