The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor | Hacker News Reader

The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor

nytimes.com

95 points__Joker183 comments

Getting average citizens worked up over welfare is a standard way for the extremely wealthy and powerful to distract those same average citizens from noticing where their tax money gets squandered the most - large corporate subsidies, infrastructure projects that benefit the richest neighborhoods, and so on, and so on. The largest welfare programs I know of are unneeded weapons systems, which very intentionally subcontract work out to nearly every congressional district in the land (see the B-2 as an example).

The amount paid to corporate subsidies is pretty obscene:

http://imgur.com/ttNcwHA

Are you sure that all these corporate subsidies are that bad? Do you have information of breakdown of the target of subsidies by companies?

For example, Tesla receive about 5b$ of government subsidies. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-2015... This, I think, is investment which really worth it, it's the most innovative automotive company in the world, and it would be impossible without this.

Nitpick: the $4.9 billion figure is for Tesla, SpaceX, and SolarCity combined.

Also, the sum $4000 sounds too round for me, especially taking into account, that other numbers provided doesn't contain so many zeroes in them.

Actually I opened the source: http://www.commondreams.org/views/2013/09/23/add-it-average-...

Here're their largest points:

1. $1268 - for overpriced medications

2. $1231 - for revenue loss from tax havens

3. $870 - for corporate tax subsidies

All of them are very questionable.

Is this accurate? It basically says that middle class people spend six times as much paying for corporate subsidies than they spend paying for things like defense, welfare payments, medicare, etc., combined. The fact that the information is conveyed using a poor-quality jpeg screenshot of an unattributed infographic from two years ago, however, does not inspire confidence.

The two sources at the bottom of the graphic are redirected to the following:

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2013/09/23/add-it-average-...

https://www.whitehouse.gov/2014-taxreceipt

It looks like this claim is based on aggregating direct subsidies, inflated profits enabled by government mandates and protections, and lost tax income resulting from preferential tax policies and tax shelters.

No it's not accurate. I mean hell, $7 of your $50k goes to welfare? That's 0.014%. In reality, depending on what you want to call welfare (republicans like to call everything welfare and pretend it's bankrupting the country in order to scale it down, for example, so you have wildly different definitions in the political spectrum) it's around 5-8% of GDP. So this is just laughably inaccurate. Defense spending of $250, in reality it's closer to $2k.

Then there's the corporate subsidies, they're more interesting because they're not necessarily wrong. Perhaps this number is but in general they're very high, but not in the way people normally think about subsidies. I see numbers thrown around all the time with murky definitions and it's misleading.

For example, the IMF did a study that showed $5.3 trillion in oil subsidies worldwide. Gigantic number, consider world GDP is $75 trillion, US a little under $18 t.

Now I'm sympathetic to the study, agree with it, and think we should take that number seriously and do something about it. I also think it constitutes a form of subsidy.

But it's a bit misleading to say this means we're all paying thousands of dollars to corporate subsidies on this basis from our actual paycheck. There are different forms of subsidies and there's value in not muddying the semantics too much.

What the study measures are externalities that aren't priced in. A person dies in motorised traffic? You can combat it by pricing that into the price of oil. A climate change related natural disaster happens, or we have to pay for CO2 cleanup, or healthcare costs rise due to oil-industry fumes causing lung cancer somewhere, you can price all of that in. Not pricing that in is a form of subsidy, but it's not like we take thousands of dollars from our pay check and send it to the companies to support them, very little money goes to these companies, the issue is we don't extract enough from them that we should once we look at the damage they cause, and this is technically a subsidy. The IMF measures the missed revenue from taxing fossil fuels at a lower range than it should if it prices in all externalities.

Yet I've seen renowned green energy pundits in my country (the Netherlands) talk about these $5.3 trillion subsidies as if we're sending that money to corporations every year. I'm completely on their side, yet I don't think this is helpful, there's too much misleading information thrown around.

You bring up many excellent points. There are worthwhile corporate subsidies, just like there are worthwhile social "welfare" programs. I've known many US citizens who criticized "welfare" (i.e., food stamps for the urban poor), who were perfectly happy to pick up unemployment checks. My original point wasn't really to criticize all corporate subsidies per se, but simply to point out that when US citizens criticize "welfare", it's often a result of their having been cynically manipulated away from focusing on their own real interests.

People talk about "corporate subsidies" as though a corporate tax number was sent down from the heavens and any amount collected less than that number is somehow equivalent of taking tax payer dollars and sending them to shareholders.

No one likes a complicated manipulated tax code that favors certain firms/industries, but equating a complicated tax code that sets a higher tax rate than is normally collected to transferring tax payer dollars to shareholders of corporations is dishonest.

At the end of the day it boils down to that fact that the poor as a class, are easily abused and manipulated -- by governments, private entities, even the poor themselves.

One of the most perverted ways they are abused is they are convinced to vote against their own interests. For example thinking back at Obama's healthcare reform and the fate of the single payer option vis-a-vis the "get your socialist government outta my Medicare" crowd. Even further up the line, gutting education also pretty much ensures a future crowd of uneducated easily manipulated crowds for the next generation to abuse and take advantage of. So the system is already set to self-perpetuate.

As a side note, speaking of manipulating, a good example is always Bush Jr. using evangelicals in his campaigns in early 2000s.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jesus/evangeli...

I think that was a brilliant move to use them, because they were a lot of them (1), they were relatively wealthy (2), they were easily reached, as they already congregated in large clubs i.e. megachurches (3), they are easily brainwashed with the right words (4).

Why is it that when rich people vote against their self interest and vote to raise taxes, that's considered noble. But when poor people vote against their self interest and vote for the government to take less money from people other than them, they're being manipulated?

I don't know, I haven't thought about their motivation and interest yet too much. But talking to a few of them in the past (one was worth probably $100m+) I undestand they want to pay more taxes to maintain infrastructure and and not push the poor too much over the edge. Prisons are already full, crime is high, inequality is high, enough kids are already starving. So it seem the more forward thinking of the wealthy can see the current course of action might not be end well for everyone.

But I have a hard time believing that each poor person with less than a month in savings, working for some fast food chain, is making a rational decision voting against nationalized health care or rasing taxes, just in case they reach the American Dream, and become a successful owner of a small busininess who will be strangled and starved by high taxes from Uncle Sam when they do.

One of the biggest lies is that the rich got the poor to think of themselves as not poor, but pre-wealthy. They are just a few hard working years ago from being Donald Trump, if they just worked a bit hard (because if they don't they are just a lazy and deserve it). So as such, they sure wouldn't want to vote against the interest of the future successful selves...

Maybe they are being manipulated but I just think its a little classist to second guess the beliefs of those in lower socio-economic classes. Just as you may rightfully reject the idea that the poor are poor because they're stupid, I equally reject the idea that the poor vote against their self interest because they're stupid or easily manipulated.

The alternative to believing that you are pre-wealthy is believing that you are stuck in your current socio-economic class and don't really need to strive for anything. Working towards a goal is a benefit in it of itself. Explains why those that are handed everything in life are often unhappy.

The ironic thing is people angered by inequality and also angered by the belief that social mobility is even possible.

> I just think its a little classist to second guess the beliefs of those in lower socio-economic classes

I am second-guessing based on their actions not just beliefs. After talking to wealthy acquintances and poor ones, I can see why the wealthy might not mind paying more taxes longer term. After talking to more poor acquintances and how they justify how and why they vote, I don't a good rational explanation often.

> Working towards a goal is a benefit in it of itself.

That's a good point. I believe in that as well. I just think it is better if goals are realistic and it is important to understand how the world works and how power is distributed, should they want to make any change or affect or change it, they'd be able to.

Education. The rich are informed and therefore its noble. The poor are uninformed are therefore its manipulation.

I live in a small town and most of my poor friends voted for Obama. Now they are all furious because they're getting fined for not having health insurance. They don't make enough (or don't manage their money well enough) to pay for Obamacare every month. It doesn't provide great plans either - one person I know pays $130/month for a plan with a deductible of several thousand.

Exactly it was a typical bait and switch program. It should have had a single payer option but that was gutted pretty quickly in the beginning (one can argue it would have never passed without).

I was on the other end of the spectrum. I had a good insurance through a small company and because of Obama care also kind of got screwed insurance company raised our rates 50%+ in a couple of years before the whole thing started to go into effect.

My husband and I's rates have skyrocketed as well - and they were already close to $300/month per person.

I grew up in Canada and went to school with rural kids, military kids, and french kids. My family wasnt in poverty but we didnt have many of the nice things others had.

Around grade 5 I began to notice how we never had money for a TV, but all the welfare kids I knew had TVs in their rooms. i noticed how I had to do chores, work, save, and help neighbours to afford to buy a game console and video games, and all my friends on welfare had every system and every game.

I would wonder why my lunch had an apple in place of their Fruit Rollups and Cookies. One kid even got a pack of starbursts in his lunch every single day, if I was lucky, he would share or trade one with me.

Now that Im an adult I can see that my parents priorty with their limited finances were GOOD food, GOOD clothes, and the necessities we needed for success.

I kind of wonder how many kids that grew up on welfare are packing Fruit Rollups in their kids lunches today, how many welfare kids walk around with iPhones when lower middle class families cant afford it, etc.

It has been my observation in Canada that what seems to work with cash assistance is a cushion to break your fall, not an IV dripping just-enough to not have to work.

Where I lived you also had to prove you were applying for work to stay on it, but if you got a minimum-wage full-time job you would lose your welfare but not have as much money, so of course everybody's parents applied as often as they needed to, only went to work when they absolely needed to, and quit as soon as they possibly could to regain or keep the welfare status. And of course they modelled this to their kids.

So I do think welfare can totally short circuit personal success, Ive seen many lives reduced to manipulating a aystem instead of becoming something beneficial to others. Its sad but I believe its human nature

No matter how much assistance you provide, it cant be so much that it disincentivizes you from rejoining the work force without facing a 'penalty'.

>Ive seen many lives reduced to manipulating a aystem instead of becoming something beneficial to others

Well, it ought to prepare them for a life dealing with corporate politics in that case.

Many poor people also smoke and play the lottery, because that the entertainment that's accessible to them.

> Where I lived you also had to prove you were applying for work to stay on it, but if you got a minimum-wage full-time job you would lose your welfare but not have as much money...

Would you rather see the elimination of welfare or the removal of sharp cliff-like penalties for re-entering the workforce (eg, benefits that taper off as your income rises)?

Regardless of which answer, why?

> No matter how much assistance you provide, it cant be so much that it disincentivizes you from rejoining the work force without facing a 'penalty'.

That's the welfare cliff, and it can be solved while keeping the overall welfare system in place.

It just means that we need to wean off welfare between 20k/year and 40k/year, to encourage people to work at higher paying jobs instead of penalizing people who work at higher paying jobs.

Everyone knows it is a problem, but Congress is too "busy" investigating Benghazi for years rather than hammering out a law that solves the welfare cliff.

We have that. It's called the earned income tax credit.

That needs to apply to _all_ government programs, like Food Stamps.

SNAP cuts off immediately once you grow above the monthly income. So if you get a raise, all of a sudden you lose all food stamp benefits.

There isn't just one welfare cliff to be solved: there are dozens. All of which need to be converted into something like the Earned Income Tax Credit (which more gradually weans people off of the Welfare as their income grows)

I guess since we can't all openly stereotype people based on race and religion any longer we'll have to make do with stereotyping the poor. I'd love for you to show me these iPod toting welfare recipients. I'm Canadian, and can assure you that welfare recipients are not living high-on-the-hog. Due to the extremely high cost of living in Canada they are, in fact, quite impoverished http://www.ccsd.ca/factsheets/fs_ncwpl01.htm Great to see another conservative view point buttressed with nothing more than anecdotes. Also, based on your account, by age 10 you and your friends were discussing your parents finances to the point you knew which families were receiving welfare? Seems far fetched.

And all you'll ever get is anecdote if you look in the U.S. The "welfare professionals" (let's define this term to mean those that know precisely the minimum of effort to maintain the illusion of 'seeking gainful employment' in order to keep their handouts) keep a low-profile and compartmentalize well. Going to the welfare office today? Don't wear new/"in" clothing, don't take the iDevice with. Out and about socially? Maintain the appearance of not actually being on welfare of any sort: wear the nicer clothing, expose the iDevice prominently. And they can't have their children mocked and ridiculed at school for not fitting in as well, so they need their own iDevice as well.

It's anecdote because there's no data. There's no data because who'd admit to cheating the system? There's no cause for investigation due to compartmentalization-- none of their intended social circle knows they're on welfare; any that do are also on welfare and doing the same thing.

How would I, a "technocrat" making about six figures know this? Because a couple times in my life I've had to take advantage of this safety net. And I was always irritated at how people I'd seen entering and leaving the welfare office had so much material crap that I couldn't afford when I'd see them again out in public. There were several occasions where some of these welfare recipients were running businesses and hired me to perform computer repair, then in the offices I'd here them on the phone discussing with others how to game a particular part of the system. Disheartening.

You want /data/ on this? Good luck.

LOL, so it's a conspiracy and all the poor people are in on it!

I never said all of them; I said "welfare professionals" for which I don't have a count. If you want a count from my anecdote, let's say 15. I can't even guess a percentage because I didn't sit at the welfare office all day observing and counting people, nor following them around to observe their public lives and behavior. I'm sharing my own anecdote so you can see how it might be impossible to find actual data on this phenomenon.

Certainly there are people who "conspire" to do bad things. Sometimes the "conspiracy" is one guy. Sometimes it's a small group. The only thing I can say with absolutely certainty is that the system will be gamed. How much depends on data that you're just not going to find.

This entire rant is just that: a rant. You have no idea if anything you're talking about is real. It's all anecdote and suspicion at others.

Someone who is creative and fastidious about saving, reusing and recycling would, to your eyes, look like a welfare fraud because they might superficially seem better off then you think they should.

How is it a rant? He has first-hand, eye-witness experience.

There are enough anecdotes (I could supply a few) to suspect there is a welfare abuse problem - we just don't know the extent of it, as numbers are hard to come by (for reasons explained by the poster you criticize).

Stating the fact that _some_ people take advantage of the system does not make one a heartless bastard.

So it's the same level of anecdotal evidence as all of those suspected in-person voter fraud cases, which justified the introduction of voter ID laws?

Yup, you definitely sound like you have never been poor.

Sorry, that's only my 2nd most anticipated downvote from a parent-poster.

The parent poster cannot downvote your comment, as you cannot downvote this comment.

Oh yes. What could an HN story that involves poverty be without yet another round of "You don't know poor people. Let me tell you about poverty."

I am not offering a story. Where'd you get that? Oh, right, you imagined it.

Cost of living in Canada before the year 2000 was significantly more affordable on a housing basis alone in Ontario and BC, which contain half of the countries' population. The high cost of living comes from the constant universal government policies to increase housing values and a housing bubble that has never popped.

I don't think the cost of food or transit has gone up much in inflation adjusted dollars. The cost of gas and probably household energy has gone up significantly although. Overall most of the cost of living problems for the poor comes from housing.

Look at it this other way: is there something we could afford to provide for the cost of those TVs and iPhones that would ensure a good chance of those people lifting themselves out of poverty? If the answer is yes, then you've discovered a game changer: for a few thousand dollars per person, we could end poverty! The government should just buy those things for people directly and watch the magic happen.

If the answer is no, then it's stupid to complain about poor people buying an iPhone or TV. It's calling for a meaningless gesture of piety. They're not making those purchases in lieu of something that would advance their condition.

no, they're just wasting money foolishly and then gawping about like goldfish when they have no money left for things that matter. so maybe it's stupid to complain, but that doesn't make it smart to facilitate.

What if there is such a thing, but it only works if the people themselves do it, not the government?

For a concrete example, it seems to me that one thing that helps people get out of poverty is having some savings. Being poor is expensive, often because large expenses compound due to financing, late fees, or even just an inability to make bulk purchases. Having a financial cushion can make life a lot cheaper. But there's no way (that I can see, anyway) that the government can provide such a cushion for someone who wants to spend it right away on irrelevant stuff.

The few thousand dollars you might save not buying a TV or cell phone isn't going to do shit to get you out of poverty. You can't save your way out of being poor a nickle and dime at a time.

It means you can stop wasting money on buying necessities constantly in small quantities, not pay massive interest on credit cards or payday loans because your needs a sudden repair, etc. Will this solve the problem? Surely not for everybody. But a big problem (even if far from the only problem) with getting out of poverty is that it's a trap because it's so expensive to be poor.

Except it doesn't mean that. It means that when you have $300 in the bank instead of buying a cheap TV set, and suddenly your car needs $500 in repairs, you're still going to a payday loan place, except you're on the hook for $200 instead of $500. Still paying the fees, still stuck in the let's-rip-off-the-poor cycle, except you also don't have a tv set.

I know, I know, now you'll say "well you're poor, what do you need a tv set for, you should sit in your dank apartment with just the road noise for entertainment," and that's where the compassion kicks in: these folks are poor, they're not animals, and if TV lets them be less miserable, it's about as cheap a way to do so as is reasonable.

It's 'poor people have refrigerators' in another guise. It is apparently a laudable goal to decay our social infrastructure till large parts of our cities will resemble African poverty.

TV's are completely different to fridges in this discussion, I'd say. One is pure entertainment, the other has functional uses that help reduce costs, as well as improve health by preventing food from going off.

That's practically irrelevant, and also stunningly blind to how humans actually function. Entertainment is important - its sufficiently important that we've dedicated considerable resources to it throughout the sum of human history, to the point that we ship giant entertainment venues to warzones.

But more to economic point: TVs are cheap. The TVs people complain about are maybe ~$500, and you can do very well if you shop second hand. They are a one-off capital expense which considerably improves your life, and which the lack of sale thereof utterly fails to meaningfully help you not be poor.

Because poverty is a flow problem, and it fails to be defined by whether or not one owns certain conspicuous goods. If we were talking about impoverished people who were nonetheless buying $3000 LCDs on debt every few years, then we might have something to talk about. But since concrete examples are always conspicuously absent when points of this nature are brought up, I'm content to point to the economics: selling your TV wouldn't meaningfully improve your situation, buying a TV doesn't meaningfully degrade it.

It's also worth noting that in a discussion of being unable to climb out of poverty, requiring people to dispose of all their worldly possessions before we help them is a good way to create a poverty trap.

You are missing the point of welfare: it is supposed to help people get back on their feet, not keep them dependent on taxpayer's money for the rest of their lives. So training/education, not TVs and computer games.

That $500 could perhaps buy supplies to study at a local community college (tuition waivers/scholarships are available).

Poor != stupid.

Except that sitting all day watching TV is CERTAIN to keep them on welfare for the rest of their lives.

Perhaps buying them books instead would work better? Community colleges are very inexpensive, there are state grants available to the poor. Why not create incentives to learn a skill/trade, perhaps a degree?

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime"

Instead of down-voting a relevant, on-topic comment, please provide a counter argument.

Are you saying that being on the hook for 60% less in interest and fees isn't an improvement? Is a millionaire still stuck in a poverty trap because it's theoretically possible for them to get hit with costs that exceed their savings? What you're describing sounds like a huge improvement, not "still stuck."

Regarding your second paragraph, no, I wouldn't say that. I'm not actually passing any judgment here. I don't think that buying iPhones and fancy TVs is a particularly wise choice for poor people, but I also don't really fault them for it. I'm merely giving an example of something which could help with poverty but which the government can't provide. A decent chunk of poverty comes from poor financial choices, and that's just an observation without implying any judgment towards the affected people.

You're barking up the wrong tree though - iphones and TVs are fixed costs. I'm willing to bed vast majority of the poor spend vast majority of their money on housing, food and clothing, although a small minority might actually spend it on crack. And of course, a small minority will attempt to keep on welfare for as long as possible.

Would you feel better if they do not have iphones? After all, they should know their place in the system, no?

Do you even know the actual figures? How much does a single welfare recipient get per month?

We can play a game of anecdotal evidence all day. My experience is totally opposite to yours, welfare was though and no way in hell did we have more than our peers. Welfare was also something you didn't talk about, it was embarrassing and my dad yearned for a job, not for the money, he got that on welfare, but for the human dignity, the social contact, the respect, instead he was paralysed at home. Incentives played no role.

But we're in agreement on your final sentence and I do acknowledge that there are people who game the system. But the issue I feel with the welfare debate is that it's usually a discussion about reducing it (to increase incentives to work), maintaining it or expanding it, with most people leaning towards one of the first two options. When really there are genuine cases of welfare where incentives play no role, and they're being squeezed hard. The debate should be more geared towards reducing fraud, catching dishonest recipients and supporting them in their dependency, not squeezing dishonest and honest welfare recipients all the same.

I can attest to this in the U.S. as well. I hang out with a pagan community that has a high percentage of people on food and cash assistance. They get so much money that they purchase holiday gifts with EBT (food stamps) and live almost solely on expensive branded snack food. Every person I've known on EBT has been gaming the system in some way - everything from getting roommates to sign off that rent is higher so they get more money and doing work under the table for cash and not reporting it, to wanting to get married but deciding not to because it would eliminate their benefits and turning down higher paying jobs because they know they need to keep low-wage, part-time jobs to keep benefits. Withdraw cash from a cash card to buy earrings, concert tickets and other luxuries - no problem! Until a couple years ago I didn't even know people were given debit cards with money on them from the government.

I had always thought that poor people bought generic products, had old TVs, couldn't afford cable, had old flip phones, etc. But it's the exact opposite. The poor people I know on welfare/assistance have much nicer things than the middle class people I know.

I believe that the system needs to be revised so only certain products can be purchased with government funds. It would help to keep the people using these services healthier as well.

I was born into a single parent family in a trailer park. I worked my way out of that situation including serving in the US Marines in order to pay for college. Even coming from a background that should have led my family to use welfare (mom was too proud and cleaned houses instead) I tend to lean more towards the idea that welfare and the nanny state in general hurt more than they help. The CATO Institute does a lot of research into this.

http://www.cato.org/blog/how-welfare-state-traps-poor-depend...

This shows the gaming of the US Welfare system and the inherent disincentives to work. http://www.salon.com/2010/03/16/hipsters_food_stamps_pinched...

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2011/01/hipsters-food-stamps-and-...

Here in Ontario, Canada, whenever the teacher go on strike everyone else gets up in arms, the reality is that the teachers are one of the few areas of employment that still have good wages and benefits. Instead of saying we need to bring everyone down to the lowest level we should be asking for everyone to be pulled up to the level of teachers.

Note: Unlike other places, teaching is a great job in Ontario.

No it doesn't. It shows that people who qualify for food stamps (they're still unemployed or low income) don't just have to get crappy food that is terrible for them, and that they are autonomous adults who, though qualifying for aid, are still able to decide how to best spend it based upon the various resources they have available to them. They aren't forced to spend it on just ramen while looking ashamed and embarrassed in the store just to placate those not in the same situation.

Some may argue that the US military is a big provider of welfare, handing out "fictitious" jobs to almost anybody in a "socialist" way.

I'm very aware of this argument and even agree with it in some cases. I will say that it's still 'work' in a very real sense. In my case, it was the most respectable ways for me to earn my way out of poverty and eventually have enough money for college.

but do you see the subjectivity of your opinion?

> was too proud

> the idea that welfare and the nanny state in general hurt more than they help

> the most respectable ways

you are placing your own morality on other peoples' choices with definitive and hostile rhetoric

you speak of pride, respect, and hurt, but have you examined these ideas for yourself?

perhaps someone on welfare is more proud that they stayed out of the military, an entity often acting as a machine of violence used to enable politicians' often dubious goals

perhaps someone on welfare thinks it is more respectable to accept aide from others than support military effort

perhaps someone on welfare thinks it is less hurtful to accept aide from others than to accept work supporting goals that often lead to direct hurt being inflicted on others

so, by your own criteria those accepting welfare are in the right as well because they are: too proud to join the military, think it is more respectable to stay out of the military, and think the military causes hurt more than welfare

i think it's dangerous to question a person's character lest you be prepared to have your own questioned

Military jobs are anything but fictitious.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualt...

I'd like to see the term "warfare queen" become part of the vernacular the way "welfare queen" did.

The army's healthcare system is positively European too.

That's actually one of the arguments for UBI (unconditional basic income) - it would reduce the problem that welfare can't reach many of the people who are supposed to benefit from it but too proud to ask for help. (UBI would also reduce the welfare trap mentioned in the Cato article.)

So instead of trying to allocate limited resources to those who most need it we should instead blindly split those resources equally among everyone? And this will help the poor how?

The argument behind the U in UBI (universal) is that it removes incentives against work (cases where working harder yields less money), costs less because there's no effort to keep people out, and is repaid as taxes by those with larger incomes.

I'd need to see numbers again, but it's raw numbers we should use to decide how to run an economy, not rhetoric about "helping the poor how?"

The wealthy will, in effect, receive nothing, as their taxes will increase more than they will receive from UBI.

Two of the strongest arguments for UBI are: 1) we waste a lot of money administering welfare services. UBI is designed to be inexpensive to administer, which directs more money to the poor. 2) research is beginning to suggest that direct cash transfers have better long term impact per dollar spent than just about any other intervention. see, e.g. research on GiveDirectly's impact

The wealthy will, in effect, receive nothing, as their taxes will increase more than they will receive from UBI.

Yes, but what about the working/low-middle class who currently mostly doesn't pay for nor receive welfare? That's money that could be allocated for the actual poor.

The point is that you spend more money trying to do this, and help less people, then just not worrying about it. Attempts at identifying the truly needy end up mostly excluding them and making the aid less helpful overall.

>The point is that you spend more money trying to do this, and help less people, then just not worrying about it.

People keep repeating this. Go ahead and give us the actual numbers involved in your claims to back it up, since it fails even the most basic of smell tests.

>1) we waste a lot of money administering welfare services. UBI is designed to be inexpensive to administer, which directs more money to the poor.

I find it hard to believe we waste more money administering welfare than we will transfer to those who really don't need it under the need-blind UBI.

Under UBI we'll be giving money to many, many people who need it less than the current welfare recipients, and even UBI will require administration.

A solution (UBI) that claims to help a group (the actual needy) that is not tailored to administer to that group is unlikely to benefit them, especially since it's now going to split the fixed amount of benefits to others not in the group.

>see, e.g. research on GiveDirectly's impact

What works in Kenya does not necessarily work at every location and economy. It's not like we have not studied this question in the US for nearly a century, and recent research on foreign third world cases does not overturn a century of research on first world economic aid.

And this is not an argument for UBI. At best it would be an argument to change current welfare programs to give cash aid to those already eligible for welfare.

Do you happen to have any pointers to such research? If anything rigorous (comparable to GiveDirectly's randomized controlled trials) has been done in the US about the effect of just handing out cash, I would really be interested.

Some studies:

http://econweb.tamu.edu/common/files/workshops/PERC%20Applie...

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304387813...

http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/cfg...

Articles related to the studies:

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/10/25/240590433/what-...

http://www.economist.com/news/international/21588385-giving-... (direct cash vs CCTs)

http://www.fastcoexist.com/3049642/solving-inequality/how-to...

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/wel...

Those are great, thanks! All bookmarked.

Another good read [1]. Here is a quote from the author of some key papers in favor of cash to certain poor, also the author of some pop articles on the idea:

"If I were an enterprising young researcher looking for an idea and experiments that will prove powerful in five years, I would try to find the stake I can drive into the heart of the cash transfer movement."

He states that giving cash is useful if the person is enterprising, such as trying to start a business, and direct cash is what is holding them back. I doubt this is most poor people, especially in the US. Otherwise, cash is not as useful as other poverty alleviation methods.

[1] http://chrisblattman.com/2013/06/27/why-cash-transfers-to-th...

This is quite an interesting paper, thanks. But the idea that cash is useful only if the person is enterprising was not a result of this study, but an opinion that motivated its setup. As they write in the conclusions, it was "our conceptual framework" that suggests that the study has targeted the right (enterprising) people. Which I agree with, considering the variables they were interested in measuring.

Excerpts from the setup:

Groups had to submit a written proposal stating how they would use the grant for non-agricultural skills training and enterprise start-up costs. [...] The central government asked district governments to nominate 2.5 times the number of groups they could fund. [...] Successful proposals [note: randomized] received a large lump sum cash transfer [...] with no government monitoring thereafter.

Excerpts from the conclusions:

These results show that cash grants to groups of young people who develop business plans have large and persistent impacts in moving underemployed into non-agricultural jobs, increasing earnings and work hours. [...] In the end, YOP appears to have reached a group of motivated, able young people, who on average were neither exceptionally poor nor uneducated relative to their peers, in an economy with little financial depth but bouncing back from civil strife. Our conceptual framework suggests this is exactly the group to benefit from a windfall.

The idea is everyone ends up better off because you don't need a giant civil service bureaucracy to apply arcane rules about who does and does not qualify for various subsidies.

I'm in the Army.

What do you think about people who don't qualify to join the military? What should they do? The military is a life saver for a lot of people, but not everyone can do it.

Every Cato Institute loving Silicon Valley Libertarian should learn this one word:

DARPA

$3 Billion / year of taxpayer funds invested in the tech industry. Plus, lots of other government agencies and procurement involved in nurturing tech.

I mean literally Siri was invented by DARPA.[1] And you can thank it for your next autonomous car.[2] Also a thing called the Internet.

So tell us again how investing in people is a corrupting influence but investing in tech companies is critical early-stage support?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CALO

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge

When we see someone say something disagreeable, it's tempting to hope that they also hold another view inconsistent with that. Then we can point out the inconsistency. But if we assume that they hold this other view, we will say irrelevant, nonsensical things.

You ask xacaxulu to "tell us again" something they never said in the first place.

I'm pretty sure Cato knows about DARPA, as many of its contributors regularly criticize it. I'm not sure why you're assuming they're for it.

http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/ca...

A bit tangential, but I'd also argue that the military as recourse is, itself, an unfair burden on poor people.

Rich kids don't feel compelled to enlist just to make financial ends meet. Even I (single parent household, parent was a teacher), when faced with an inability to find a job when out of high school, had the grades and support to 'fall back' onto college instead. I wasn't forced to risk my life just to stay solvent.

More on point, though, I think a lot of people with this view conflate the particular implementation of welfare (itself a cause of compromise between right and left wing), with the nature of welfare itself. That is, because there is such a wide gap between "welfare, not working", and "fully self supported" that unless you can land in a job that pays well it doesn't make sense from a total utility perspective for many to find a low wage job and work that in lieu of (or alongside partial) welfare, we dismiss the idea of welfare completely. Or by example, the person on disability who is unable to work full time, but who, if they try to work above X amount of hours, ends up -losing- money, due to loss of disability benefits, as well as (obviously) losing on free time, and so ends up not working as much as they could. Due to cases like that, many people end up blaming welfare itself, rather than a flawed implementation of it.

Per another commenter, I too think a UBI would address this (as well as the basic issue that with more automation we have less need of people working, and I'd prefer someone trying to figure out what useful work they could do that would result in them getting paid for the real utility they provide, rather than just taking an unnecessary job just to make ends meet. Wage slavery in jobs that could be automated is an even more flawed form of welfare than government handouts).

I agree with this. Among 1st world nations, the US is the only country that has this sort of pipeline into military service. It's generally referred to as the economic draft.

>A bit tangential, but I'd also argue that the military as recourse is, itself, an unfair burden on poor people.

Not borne out by the statistics. The average recruit comes from a family that's better educated and wealthier than the average American. The real problem with poor people using the military to lift themselves out of poverty is so many of them can't enlist as a consequence of obesity or a criminal record.

'Rich kids don't feel compelled to enlist just to make financial ends meet.'

Statistics only tell you the demographics of enlisting, not -why- they're enlisting. Plenty of people enlist because of reasons other than "I have no other options available to me". My point was that "I have no other options available to me" is only ever true for poor people.

>My point was that "I have no other options available to me" is only ever true for poor people.

And my point was if you have no other options the military probably won't take you either.

Wait... So you're saying a government program that pays well allowed you and your family to move out of poverty?

Congratulations, you've been through a lot and came out nicely.

I believe that people take for granted situations that are not... Granted. A a 5-year old who lives in Bronx and his mother sells drugs for a living, doesn't have a choice. By the time he is 15, his future is already seriously broken 99 out of 100 times. Of course there are exceptions, but it's like startups... For every team that succeeds there are 1.000 smart, interesting, extremely hard-working team that fails for a huge variety of reasons.

IMHO having a parent that will teach you how to face problems, life, etc. is more valuable than money per-se.

You had your mother who was too proud, so she fought. Now you seem to have the same stance towards difficulties. Other children do not have mother like yours.

Maybe we owe more to the society than we like to reckon[1].

[1] http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2009/10/cla...

You're pretty lucky you had a massive govt welfare program to fall back on.

You should read/listen to this: http://www.npr.org/2015/10/20/450175865/do-we-have-less-symp...

My understanding is that the CATO Institute is paid for largely by the right-winger Charles Koch (a former member of the John Birch Society) and is an organization that shills right-wing thought. The CATO institute isn't an "independent think tank" - it's been set up to promote a right-wing agenda.

Paul Krugman histories the development of an entire network of such entities by wealthy arch-conservatives and small-business organizations (who supported right-wing ideas because they reduce taxes and empower employers vis-a-vis employees and especially unions) in his book

"The Conscience of a Liberal":

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393333132?keywords=conscie...

This network of organizations, which took decades to build, does indeed compose a "vast right-wing conspiracy" in the sense that they coordinate with and cross-reference each other to deliver right-wing political views and to promote the hiring of lobbyists and aides in Washington, D.C. who share their political views. Luckily, according to Krugman, their persuasive power is diminishing with time.

My take-away: don't equate one of these right-wing "think tanks" with a real think-tank, e.g., RAND corporation.

They provide some pretty straightforward calculations to back up their point. Are the calculations wrong? If so, where is the first mistake?

The calculations aren't wrong (well, they might be, but it's immaterial). What is wrong is the belief that this is the way things have to be, and that the choice is a binary "keep the status quo" or "eliminate welfare".

Why do we cut the amount of welfare people get as their income increases? Well, there's the obvious reason, that their income should supplant welfare. Is that what happens? No. Their income ends up paying less than welfare, until they earn sufficiently high amounts.

Why is that? Because the system is broken. As a cynic, I would even say that the pressure to cut it off earlier, rather than later, largely stems from conservative pressures ("if they're able to work that minimum wage job for 30 hours, then they certainly should be able to work 40! Stop their governmental handout at 30 hours!" "Okay, then we'll just work 20" "If they can work 20, they can work 30! Stop their governmental handout at 20 hours!" Etc). That is, this broken system that they're speaking out against is -exactly the broken one they caused-.

What would actually make sense? Well, tailoring off welfare payments at some percentage of earned income. Let's say 50%.

That is, someone on welfare earns $50 one month from a job, their welfare payout reduces by $25. Take into account additional costs as deductibles; things like "Driving to the job took an extra $10 from me" - okay, fine, then your welfare payout is reduced only $15. The tax payer has saved $15 (as only $35 was paid to the welfare recipient), the welfare recipient came out ahead by $25 ($50 earned + ($25 welfare + $10 gas refund/deductible) - $10 gas cost; they walk away with $75, $50 of which they earned), -and- they're working toward rejoining the workforce. Welfare effectively stops once they've reached wages of 2x welfare + cost of incidentals, and until they reach that point, every extra dollar they earn is a net gain to them; there is no valley where their purchasing power actually drops because they chose to work.

While we're at it, if we're really concerned about people working, let's also fund more job training centers, more disability rehab and job placement centers, etc.

Why don't we do all of that? Because there is no political pressure to do that; conservatives would rather completely dismantle welfare, and liberals either aren't that concerned by the status quo, or are tired of trying to work with conservatives over the issue (and so it's become a shouting match where both parties have drawn lines in the sand and refused to compromise).

" entire network of such entities by wealthy arch-conservatives and small-business organizations"

So, these 'evil networks' of small-business owners want less taxes to grow their business by making more money and employing more people?

I can't see how an employed and wealthy population could be a bad thing.

The dichotomy is between small businesses that will employ more people, and those organizations that put enriching themselves before preventing human suffering.

Lower taxes and higher owner incomes aren't 1:1 equatable to job creation or greater collective wealth.

Data: http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic-intelligence/20...

And they do

https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2014/wp14114.pdf

Not "evil networks" but "entire network".

"I can't see how an employed and wealthy population could be a bad thing."

It isn't. But what we're facing is a _small_ employed and extremely wealthy fraction of the population together with a _huge_ low-paid supermajority of the population.

Small business owners want fewer and less taxes, no unions, lower wages, lower healthcare costs, fewer worker protections, etc. Left to themselves they would drive wages to zero. Small businesses join others to support certain non-profits that lobby in Washington, DC on their behalf. Nothing illegal, but one must ask such questions as: "Where are the lobbyists for low-paid workers?" or "Who will support the workers' families after the workers die from inhaling toxic substances day after day?" These are questions in which the small businessman's lobbyist has no interest.

In one chapter "Conscience of a Liberal" Krugman histories the development of this relatively new conservative and wealthy network of individuals and not-for-profit corporations. Read/skim the book for details:

http://www.amazon.com/Conscience-Liberal-Paul-Krugman/dp/039...

One of Krugman's points is that the middle class is disappearing in the USA: wealth distribution now mirrors that which existed in the so-called "Gilded Age" of the Rockefellers, Carnegie et al (late 19th-early 20th century): a small percentage of extremely rich people and a large percentage of poor, with a very small middle class.

FDR's New Deal, by increasing taxes radically on the wealthy (both inheritance and income taxes) and increasing wages, brought a strong middle-class into existence. That middle class has been the engine of the US economy but is dwindling. The solution is to restore taxes and support the worker's causes.

Gilded Age:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilded_Age

"Why We’re in a New Gilded Age" by Paul Krugman:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/may/08/thomas-...

The Rich, the Right, and the Facts: Deconstructing the Income Distribution

http://prospect.org/article/rich-right-and-facts-deconstruct...

As I understand it, CATO isn't so much right-wing as libertarian, which immediately has a small-government connotation to it. To support itself it often points out government fraud and waste, to which I happily acquiesce there is plenty (defense spending even the Joint Chiefs are explicitly against comes to mind).

Unfortunately, taking care of the less fortunate gets rolled into these arguments, only sometimes on purpose. It's rather difficult to individually consider the human benefit to welfare programs when congressmen/women with ties to defense-industry districts can just as easily make an argument for the jobs and wages paid to the working class because of those programs.

I think this is why (very much conjecture-ing here) there seems to be a groundswell of support for the idea of guaranteed income. If you can solve some of the individual woes people have collectively by giving everyone a basic income, it's easier to argue for and against government spending for individual programs, because far fewer will be able to have such a socially destructive effect if they are cancelled.

Just a thought.

The fact that you don't like Cato does not mean you need to put quotes around <independent think tank>. I don't particularly care for any think-tanks - I prefer to think for myself - but Cato is respected enough to be quoted by The Economist and other major magazines/newspapers (though they may or may not agree with what Cato had to say).

Also, of all people, you picked Krugman to form your opinion about "vast right-wing conspiracy"? Really?

"The fact that you don't like Cato does not mean you need to put quotes around <independent think tank>."

Thank you for that grammar tip: I was indeed incorrect to use quotes there. I'm still learning!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10446982

I think that either the author got it wrong, or its just cheap socialist propaganda.

Corruption is not about buying alcohol and tobacco or avoiding work, it is about becoming dependent on nanny estate to a point of:

a) blindly supporting the populist politicians even if they are corrupt.

b) ignoring the consequences of unsustainable public spending like debt and inflation. (Again, while corrupt bankers and bureaucrats become richer creating a greater inequality).

>Many governments have economic advisers with degrees from the United States who share the same ideology

He's right, but the ideology is social democracy, not free market capitalism

Hey guess what? Silicon Valley is a product of massive amounts of government funding too.

DARPA's budget is about $3B this year alone. You can thank Uncle Sam for autonomous vehicles, Siri and the Internet, to pick just three.

So if investing taxes in people isn't "free market capitalism" then neither is the tech industry.

DARPA's budget is about $3B this year alone.

Compared to $10 billion in R&D for Microsoft and Intel and $8 billion for Google: http://fortune.com/2014/11/17/top-10-research-development/

Pretty much all of that money comes from selling stuff they are only able to sell because of previous government R&D.

For example, without the government leaning heavily on integrated circuits in the 60s, would Microsoft and Google even exist today?

...in late stage development which is MUCH less risky. Super risky early stage tech development mostly happens in the public sector at taxpayer expense through government agencies like DARPA.

A lot of things are easier when it happens with other people's money. A lot of those projects didn't necessarily have the expectation to make/turn a profit.

R&D in Science and Technology(for military purposes) has nothing to do with a Welfare System.

DARPA is government spending towards national security, not 'investing taxes in people'.

> no systematic evidence that cash transfer programs discourage work

The article might as well be titled: "The Myth That Those in Lower Socioeconomic Classes Respond to Incentives".

Maybe it's true, but I think a higher bar has to be set to disprove a fundamantal building block of modern economics.

I come from a country where the thinking is that people gets minimal helps for the government in exchange for them not voting for the nazis, like the Germans did (that's the shorter, but I think it's fair). Every country has its story and point of view on welfare.

I just hope they don't go too American here, because I have not been employed in the last 3 years.

When I was growing up and mom on welfare (80's & 90's), there was a disincentive to work harder: the more income earned, the less the subsidy at roughly a dollar per dollar. I believe that poverty is not seen as a problem by our nation's leaders but instead an opportunity to exploit & control the masses.

Money in politics corrupts!

Money in the financial markets is evil!

Money in health care taints decision making!

But money going to poor people? Nah, there are no downsides at all.

If money encourages bad behavior and poor decision making, then it shouldn't apply in all of these situations?

Or alternatively, maybe it's not the money at all but the people themselves?

Just because there's "no systematic evidence that cash transfer programs discourage work" doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Speaking from personal experience there is a whole branch of my family (and it's spread over 3 generations now) that lives off of gaming the welfare system (and suing people...that's how they get money...oh and one is an illegal alient). Note that I am not saying we should abolish welfare or even that the problem is widespread, but that the problem is real.

Given, there is a corrupting influence of undeserved money on people ...

Something similar would be interesting to know (but I guess, will never be researched):

How corrupting is the influence of state-money poured into many industries of western nations, because those states want to support their own big industries (like military industry, energy, ...) and are lobbied into doing so ... the result: Money goes on and on into the same corporations, but small companies get nothing.

The cash assistance programs being cited were carried out in poor countries, from what I can tell. Maybe that works in a country where you never have enough. I'm not sure the results apply here to the United States.

I could not disagree more with the title, based on my own observations. I mean, aren't most of the people in this country poor because of mental illness or addiction?

What? No. 15% of the population is at or below the poverty line. Very few of them have ment illness or addiction. Most are simply born into circumstances with little opportunity (urban or rural), and don't have the exceptional qualities needed to break out of those trajectories.

People who aren't exceptional work and save money all the time. Working jobs doesn't require exceptional people. Also do you know the 'poverty' line isn't exactly the line where you're happy or sad. Many people are there and afford all necessities.

Working jobs doesn't require exceptional people. Lifting yourself out of poverty by working jobs often does.

I mean, aren't most of the people in this country poor because of mental illness or addiction?

No! They're poor because their parents were poor or because they grew up in a poor neighbourhood and lacked access to a proper education.

This article highlights one egregious myth but far more pernicious is the one you just highlighted: that poverty is a personal or moral failing rather than a lack of opportunity.

It's really simple: people are poor because they don't have enough money. Don't let yourself fall into the Just-World Fallacy.

"lacked access to a proper education". How does that explain Washington DC with the highest levels of funding per child in the country? Every kid has access to a well funded school with well paid teachers.

I think it's easier to defend the claim that the kids lacked guidance and support to take advantage of the education provided for them.

In the US a single mom who homeschools, with only a high school education, will have her child place in the top 70% of public school kids.

Parental involvement is so important, it's the only factor that matters.

Difficult to be involved if you both work 40+ hours a week doing physically demanding jobs.

And yet tens of millions of people do it every year in the US. It's all about priorities.

> lacked access to a proper education". How does that explain Washington DC with the highest levels of funding per child in the country? Every kid has access to a well funded school with well paid teachers.

Education funding in the US is wildly uneven. Spend some time visiting inner-city schools. They are not even remotely "well-funded".

Property-tax driven school funding formulas ensure that richer areas have much, much better funded schools than poor areas.

Inner city public schools are some of the most well-funded in the county. Washington DC is almost entirely "inner city" public schools (I.e. Almost all the student population is low income) and has the highest per student spending.

The wealthy suburb of DC where I grew up spends $13,500 per student per year. That's a lot less than DC or Baltimore or Chicago, all of which have 70-85% low-income students, and only moderately more than Philadelphia, which is also almost all "inner city" schools.

So what's going on then? Exactly how are inner cities misusing funds, and what are wealthy suburbs doing right that they're able to get such bang for their buck?

Also, are you certain that wealthy suburbs are spending that little? I know some rich families in NYC who are sending their kids in high school to schools that ask above $50k. It's a straight pipeline to Ivy league, and from what I understand there are good reasons this high school asks $50k -- they have top of the line 3d printers, souped up computers, etc.

what are wealthy suburbs doing right that they're able to get such bang for their buck

Teaching students that live in wealthy suburbs.

there are good reasons this high school asks $50k -- they have top of the line 3d printers, souped up computers, etc.

Those things probably account for $5k of value, with the other $45k being the ability to list the school on the kid's Ivy league application.

I wish people would understand that it is not ONLY about the money. I live in an affluent suburb, our high-school is 40 years old, the roof is leaking, etc. A few inner-city schools are brand new, modern, etc.

Yes, teachers are better in my town - but the most important difference are the role models. IN my town most families are professional couples, typically doctors, executives, etc. Kids are expected to not only go to college but good college and then continue on to graduate school, to at least match their parents' status. None of that, sadly, is at work in inner city families. It is a difficult problem and not something that money alone will fix.

>I think it's easier to defend the claim that the kids lacked guidance and support to take advantage of the education provided for them.

That guidance is a critical part of a "good" education. Unfortunately, we leave it up to parents and don't have a way to teach them how to raise a successful kid.

High levels of funding != quality education. Washington DC schools recently celebrated a rise in graduation rate, to 64%. [1]

My brother went to public high school in Washington DC graduating in 2008. His school had tracking, meaning you could only take classes available in your "track". A student was in either all honors/advanced classes or in all regular classes but could not take a mix of both.

The regular track was exclusively black, while the honors track was for white and/or rich students, regardless of actual academic performance!

Unless a non-white student is both high achieving and has parents who are able to navigate the bureaucratic nightmare that is the DC public schools (it was a mess even for upper-middle class white students like my brother) they don't really have an opportunity for anything other than a poor education.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/graduation-ra...

Tons of studies have been done for the last few decades and they show a pretty solid consensus (not completely unanimous but it's pretty strong) that wealth and success in this country are very largely hereditary, that socioeconomic mobility is pretty flat (and very flat relative to other developed economies except maybe the UK) and that the American dream (rags to riches for anyone who works hard, i.e. social mobility based on merit and effort) is a myth.

So no, if you're poor in the US it's not just because you've got a mental illness, that's a very wrong view of the world. Poverty is a big issue in the US and it is distinct from many (not all) developed economies for having a lot of working poverty, i.e. people who are not ill, do not suffer substance abuse, who aren't homeless and who have a job (often multiple) and yet are poor. That is very much an American phenomenon, no other developed country has so many normal people who have jobs and yet are poor and who struggle to leave their children a better life than they enjoyed.

I thought it was already widely known that this was a myth – it's not like it was ever backed by a substantial amount of research, or even a particularly convincing argument.

It also has the typical characteristics of demagoguery.

So why not charity? Why must helping the poor be a government function?

That's because it doesn't work on a large scale. It especially doesn't work during periods of crisis:

http://www.democracyjournal.org/32/the-voluntarism-fantasy.p...

http://articles.latimes.com/2014/mar/30/business/la-fi-hiltz...

http://www.salon.com/2009/03/16/turse/

Whenever I see a NYT headline that starts "The Myth of...", I know whatever they're pooh-poohing is true.

Corporate welfare has a corrupting influence on democracy and capital markets.

Wait, confused how Bush brainwashed and manipulated evangelicals? The linked article discusses the Bush whitehouse reaching out to constituents. Are evangelicals really easy to brainwash?

> Are evangelicals really easy to brainwash?

Yes they are. They are in a way pre-brainwashed by their leaders so using just the right rhetoric you can get them to act as a block and get them to do your bidding. They also have a nice property that they congregate in large megachurches, you really just have to convince the pastor to preach your agenda, and you instantly got thousands of voters.

Here is an excerpt from the link:

"President Bush made his famous comment that his favorite political philosopher was Jesus Christ because he changes your heart, I was a little bit surprised by that. Surprised, because presidential candidates usually do not make specific sectarian references to their beliefs. …"

Note, Bush Jr wasn't the only one who realized and exploited the potential. The AIPAC (Pro Israel Lobby) is also using Evangelicals.

http://www.aipac.org/connect/communities/yourchurch

^ The strategy is pretty clear. Identify pastors of megachurges and cater to them.

Here is an excerpt from AIPAC's mission page:

"Pastors and other significant community leaders have amplified their voices by inviting elected officials to speak about the U.S.-Israel relationship in church, organizing parlor meetings with members of Congress to lobby them on pro-Israel legislation and participating in AIPAC’s annual Policy Conference."

I have seen the effect first hand, it was very effective. An elderly relative was a member in one of those churches. Maybe 20-15 years ago they couldn't show you where Middle East was on the map. And all of the sudden within 5 years they somehow started talking about supporting the state Isreal and their house filled with trinkets built by settlers as "thank you"s from thousands in donations she sent over there and so on. It was a bit baffling, at first. Then I watched one the sermons by her pastor once (she had a recording) and it become clear what's happening.

Evangelicals aren't any easier to brainwash than so called "Progressives," Libertarians, White people, Asian people, Athiests, Republicans, or any human being categorized by any social group, demographic or other criteria you want to pull out. That said, just like all human beings they can sometimes be deceived, blinded by bias or just not put enough thought into their beliefs. 'Because, you know, we're human just like you and everyone else here.

One strike against them is they already believe in some magical deity who created Earth in 7 day or some such thing. That serves as a singal to other "predators" if you wish that means "I am easy to manipulate". Just say a few words about Jesus and they'll follow. Look at some of the quotes he used and language. It was very effective. Also, another plus, unlike other religious groups they already belong to large congregations, that makes it easier.

> they can sometimes be deceived, blinded by bias or just not put enough thought into their beliefs

Sure but just more so than others. Looking back it seems Bush Jr's campaign manager knew who to target and what to do. Maybe he was stupid, but people working him weren't. Didn't mean they couldn't have some kind of tea party following or something along those lines. But why work harder when you don't have to...

"Evangelical" is a pretty broad term. You seem to have cherry-picked some sets of beliefs and characteristics to support your belief.

For example, not all evangelicals are young earthers. Also not all, and probably not even most, attend the type of megachurch you keep talking about.

"Just say a few words about Jesus and they'll follow" is another straw man. There are plenty of Christians who wouldn't identify as evangelical who also will try to use the words of Jesus to their advantage. Even Bernie Sanders tried that tactic recently. I somehow doubt he's going to get a wide swath of evangelical support.

Belief in God is not the same thing as giving up rationality; which you seem to indicate. That's a common bias a lot of people have.

I think your post says more about you than the large group of people you want to stereotype and marginalize.

> For example, not all evangelicals are young earthers

It was just an example.

> There are plenty of Christians who wouldn't identify as evangelical who also will try to use the words of Jesus to their advantage

Agreed. Used in the context of elections it is clear what the purpose was.

> Belief in God is not the same thing as giving up rationality; which you seem to indicate. That's a common bias a lot of people have.

It is one of the indicators. Most of all it is an indicator that they will probably listen and follow whatever the pastor of the megachurch suggests.

At the end of the day it doesn't matter if I think they are rational or not, but that those in power who need to mobilize their vote need to think. Think of it as getting the lowest bang for your campaign buck. Who do you appeal to? They are a nice group, and it clearly worked!

Obama did the same thing, so I am not really playing for the Democrat's team or anything, liberals can be easily manipulated. Obama campaign for Hope And Change for example was awarded AdAge award.

http://adage.com/article/moy-2008/obama-wins-ad-age-s-market...

That's an award given by a marketing agency for best marketing campaigns. Usually given to Apple, Nike, Coke and so on. Well in 2008 Obama got the prize.

> I think your post says more about you than the large group of people you want to stereotype and marginalize.

The fact that that group was used and used by a large lobbying group and that Bush's campaign kind of support my idea though. It is not much of a hypothetical.

Even the most conservative sources and Evangelicals themselves talk about being betrayed and used by Bush. I don't know what other evidence we'd need:

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121384/jeb-bush-not-favor...

After all the promises and talks about Jesus they are wondering what happens to outlawing abortions, why weren't same sex marriages stopped and so on. That is what they were waiting for based on promises. Instead it was all about handouts to the military industrial complex.

That's a very reasonable response for the most part, thank you. I still take exception to the terminology "brain-washed" and the general premise. Your point about Obama's advertising award actually makes my case for me. In that sense, I could very easily make the claim that 50% of our country had been "brain-washed." In fact, many people in more conservative parts of the internet would make that kind of statement; and they would be wrong too. It's a derogatory phrase.

As for betrayal...yes, of course. That explains a lot (not all) of what is going on in the Republican primaries this year. Unfortunately, politics nearly always involves compromise to achieve common ground. Also unfortunately, evangelicals generally don't have a belief system that adequately addresses politics in the setting of a democracy or republic.

Here's an interesting thought expirement...if 10 years down the road the African-American vote left the Democratic party...would one go around saying they had been "easily brain-washed"? Such statements would probably be challenged (and should be) just as I've challenged it here.

They're not all young earthers but by definition they believe stuff which is probably wrong

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10447190 and marked it off-topic.

> The Cato Institute is a public policy research organization — a think tank – dedicated to the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets and peace.

So no agenda there then.

Same could be said about NY Times

Or even you.

Apples & right-wing think tanks.

As opposd to the publishers of THIS report?

Of course. Everyone has an agenda. Examples in this field are: (1) minimise the tax burden for their donors (2) minimise poverty (3) to grab as much funding as possible. There are many more.

What is interesting about the results (which include peer reviewed studies - the one in mentioned by the NYT doesn't seem to be peer reviewed) suggesting that cash handouts are more efficient than than more complicated welfare programs is that the cash handouts would eliminate the middle man and maximise the bang for buck of helping people in poverty. I.E. minimising the size of the charity or the government bureaucracy.

Agenda or not, data-driven or not, thoroughly studied or not, authoritative-backers or not it all boils down to how people feel about welfare.

All else is largely pencil-pushing. If you want to shape economic policy that is sustainable & impactful, it has to make a large allowance for how people feel about welfare.

Let me elaborate.

You can make well-reasoned arguments and appeal to the sound nature of people and hope that they will understand & internalize your case for welfare. You can back it up with scores of studies that have data stretching multiple decades. You can provide touching anecdotes that tug at the heart strings. You can do all that and yet people will not have a change of heart for more than a fleeting moment.

I will give you an account of how workaday people - sensible people - really think about welfare and handouts in general.

For this, I will stick to America & Americans although this could easily be extrapolated to other parts of the world.

I strongly believe that most non-welfare dependent ( & even most welfare-resenting ) Americans are like me. For this purpose let me also exclude the portion of the population that are impetuously dismissive of the "freeloaders" and "deadbeats". Including them would not be helpful here.

Having said that I think most sensible Americans are fine with some form of "public assistance" ( lump into this whatever forms of unearned perks, benefits, allowances, tax breaks, subsidies etc that the government lavishes on the low income or even some middle income people ) for those people who have fallen on hard times.

Most sensible Americans are also fine with those same forms of "public assistance" being bestowed upon those same sections of the public for even extended durations of their lifetimes. I think sensible Americans get that the ill effects of an impoverished childhood & other social curses can stretch for the better part of a generation, if not more.

What most sensible Americans won't stand for is when those benefits are still lavished on those sections of the society even when those previously disenfranchised people are now, well, no longer beggared.

Take the case of San Francisco.

It is not uncommon to find yourself dining at a restaurant where your fellow diners constitute a good chunk of these previously beggared classes.

You think ,"good for them."

It is not uncommon to find them shopping at upmarket home furnishing stores.

You think,"hmm...okay..they share my taste in rugs."

It is also not uncommon to find them gushingly sharing photos & videos of their fantastic vacations to Iceland or Namibia.

You think, "I wish I could take a month away from work. Well, perhaps next year."

It is not uncommon to find your kids struggle to stuff their applications to the same top tier colleges as these previously beggared classes who are suddenly competing with your flock, to be one among the lucky 6% or 7% that constitute the incoming class at a Yale, Columbia or Harvard.

Now you think, "screw all these welfare programs for deadbeats and moochers."

That's what it all boils down to.

Everyone's fine with handouts until it starts to get too close to home.

Your entitlements end where my feelings of hurt begin.

We can differ on the degree & scale but that's the general sentiment of most sensible workaday Americans.

Except it is not that simple. People have opinions about welfare without even interacting with individuals taking advantage of it.

Have you directly stopped and talked to those people buying rugs? Or at a restaurant? Are you sure they are not just hipster kids wearing second-hand clothes but who might work at Google or have a rich daddy with a trust fund?. Maybe you did, but I doubt it.

So a lot of opinions and "feels" people have about welfare is what they are _told_ to have. By their parents, teacher, media, friends, TV, magazines, movies, etc.

I lived with a conservative family for many years, and I was of firm opionion that welfare queens are everywhere wasting pulblic's money and that's where all out taxes were. It was a very sincere and string opionion. But it was put in not head not my socializing with "welfare queens" but by White Middle Class Americans, who also didn't really socialize much with welfare recipients, but instead listened to Fox News all day every day.

So to make story short, it is about the "feels" but the feels are often easily updated/manipulated/used by whomever you let control your thought processes.

The OP's post when read carefully was actually a lot more nuanced than you give her credit for.

Can you expand a bit on that?

> Most sensible Americans are also fine with those same forms of "public assistance" being bestowed upon those same sections of the public for even extended durations of their lifetimes. I think sensible Americans get that the ill effects of an impoverished childhood & other social curses can stretch for the better part of a generation, if not more.

This stuck out for me.

I got the impression that she has mixed feelings about assistance programs but recognises their importance whilst wanting them to be applied fairly.

Thanks JupiterMoon!

Yeah I agree with that point they made. I just didn't explicitly say it. I should have probably.

What I focused on was the idea that it often boils down to a feeling. And I agree with that too, but I wanted to point that it is important how people arrive at those feelings.

GP showed some example, but I didn't find those convincing. I think a lot of what people believe and think gets acquired and filtered through 3rd party sources (media, friends, parents, teacher etc). And even though a lot of people have strong feelings about welfare, they might not have gotten those from their own experiences.

And then of course there are whole industries (marketing, pr, propaganda) whose goal is manage feeling, perceptions and ideas in others.

Anyway, to recap I didn't disagree with their main idea, just wanted to expand on one part of it.

The nice white guy never wins(trust me I know)

Right so we should maximise the efficiency of welfare programs and ensure that they are fair (in some way). If it is true that cash is better than vouchers in terms of efficiency then we should give cash.

> most sensible workaday Americans

Let those people be thankful they have a job, instead of complaining about the one who don't. If they are not satisfied, let them ask for a raise or quit and join people on welfare.

Your feelings of "hurt" makes me chuckle. Handouts have the merits of inhibiting crime and violence. You do not want to have so many people on the street without anything to put a foot on, ready to organize for riots and reaping chaos.

Ask the Anglo-Saxons how well Danegeld worked out for them.

Why the downvote? He's using irony/sarcasm!

I honestly don't mind the downvotes. Obviously libertarians would downvote. I did mind the bit where dang decided for whatever reason to move the whole thread from it's correct position.

I did so not because I'm a libertarian or an anarcho-capitalist to be more precise. I did so because you're flat out not adding anything to the conversation, as well as seemingly dismissing valid points because you dislike the political ideology that the publication is associated with.

Either the ideas/points are valid, backed-up by evidence, etc. Or they're not.

Actually the OP had two points (and an agenda). Let's break them down.

1. I did well therefore why can't everyone be like me?

This is rather tired argument that I have seen dismissed 3 times last week on HN alone. Refuting this is a waste of everyone's time hence I ignored it.

2. Here is a think tank publishing sponsored pseudo-science with a political agenda.

This is what I commented on. In science, especially in controversial fields, the source of funding and acknowledgement of conflicting interests is almost as important as the findings for any given study. Not mentioning funding or conflicting interest is a viable grounds for withdrawal of peer reviewed publication.

Your point: > Either the ideas/points are valid, backed-up by evidence, etc. Or they're not.

Refer to my comment on the OP's point 2. To expand. Evidence can be selectively gathered and selectively presented. This is what peer review attempts to mitigate. A publication funded by a libertarian think-tank would (like a publication by a socialist think tank) face severe questions during peer review to try to determine whether there is bias. Neither TFA nor the stuff refereed to by the OP are (yet) citable research sources.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10446968 and marked it off-topic.

May I enquire why you censored me? I've noticed you doing this more and more with posts that don't agree with what I can only assume must be your point of view.

you've redefined "censored" there. HN is pretty clear about discouraging unhelpful comments, and your comment was definitely not useful. you can assume HN readers are relatively intelligent and understand that a conservative think tank promotes conservative opinions. you can't assume we all accept that as normatively evil.

Sorry this took a while to post. (Dang has already censored me in another way after a regrettable spat some months ago -- I can only submit about 5 posts a day.)

From wikipedia:

> Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication or other information which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or inconvenient as determined by governments, media outlets, authorities or other groups or institutions.

So no I used the word with it's correct meaning.

It's not a question of your comment alone but of the whole subthread. Surprising digressions are often ok on HN, but predictable digressions are tedious and not in the spirit of the site. They are non-intellectual-curiosity-gratifying. Of these, predictable ideological digressions are certainly the worst and usually go downhill the fastest. All this holds regardless of the view being advocated.

So the OP I replied to should have been the one you censored. That post was ideological. I highlighted it true but that doesn't change anything.

I don't agree. The commenter's description of personal experience made it a valuable contribution. It did not come across as primarily ideological, whereas yours did, plus was snarky—a particularly unwanted combination.

> It's not a question of your comment alone but of the whole subthread.

I'm not sure I understand. Did you censor this because of my comment or because of the thread?

The bigger issue is shilling...

I have a hard time reading that as a good-faith question.

> The bigger issue is shilling

Based on the data I see, I'm pretty sure that's false. But any user with specific concerns about astroturfing or shilling should email hn@ycombinator.com with links. When we get an email like that we look for evidence, and when we find evidence we act on it.

> I have a hard time reading that as a good-faith question.

Well it was. I don't understand why you censored my OP. I clarified my point about the GP before you censored the thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10447015. I've further clarified post-censorship https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10453441.

> Based on the data I see, I'm pretty sure that's false. But any user with specific concerns about astroturfing or shilling should email hn@ycombinator.com with links. When we get an email like that we look for evidence, and when we find evidence we act on it.

This is in effect a non-policy. This is pseudonymous forum. Users don't have any evidence other than heuristics (i.e. what the poster actually writes). Given that you don't accept that as evidence they have no possibility to raise serious questions unless there is blaringly obvious mistake on the shill's part.

EDIT Would the downvoter like to pitch in and actually contribute?

> I don't understand why you censored my OP. I clarified my point about the GP before you censored the thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10447015. I've further clarified post-censorship

That's a high word count on "censor", but I'm not sure what else there is to say.

> This is in effect a non-policy.

It sounds like you've misunderstood. Anyone with suspicions about astroturfing is welcome to email us; it's we who have the data and will look for evidence. What's not allowed is groundless accusation of other users in HN comments.

Just the photo alone made me facepalm. Why buy a riding lawn mower for five times the price of a basic push mower that would easily mow a trailer park lawn in 10 - 15 minutes?

It's not relevant to your point about the mower, but people do often put trailers on a couple of acres.

You're looking at a piece of equipment that can be used to generate income, maybe that's what it's for. It also could have been cheap/broken/free, and they intend to flip it.

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