Uber for Welfare
politico.com
politico.com
The work varied: childcare, retail, and hair salon work were the most common, but there were also school staff, church secretaries, and construction workers who needed welfare. Some of these jobs were under the table, but most were legitimate, W-2 jobs. If anything, my district had a higher percentage of people not employed, as we covered the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University campuses---so there were often grad students applying along side single mothers working in hair salons.
36% of families receiving TANF (which is what this article discusses) work.
Why not spend 30 seconds googling to determine if your anecdotes reflect reality?
Also, don't forget that the "T" in TANF means _temporary_.
Work requirements, however, should not unfairly punish people who are physically or mentally unable to complete gig economy jobs. The gig economy can often provide flexible work for those previously considered unable to work, but exemptions would still be available as needed.
Why not read the article to see what it actually advocates rather than criticizing some unrelated idea no one advocated for?
At least that's how it's turned out in the UK.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/aug/27/thousands-die...
Clinton's welfare reform program in the US did not have this effect. The main effect was a reduction in the welfare rolls and an increase in the labor supply.
>A pregnant woman jumped to her death while clutching her baby son after her benefits had been stopped, an inquest heard. Philosophy graduate Christelle Pardo, 32, plunged from the balcony of her sister's third-floor flat, killing herself and five-month-old Kayjah.
>She became pregnant shortly afterwards, but in December her JSA was withdrawn because she was within 11 weeks of giving birth and was considered unable to work. As a result she also lost her automatic entitlement to housing benefit. The mother, from Hackney, east London, was advised to apply for income support but her application was rejected because the Department of Work and Pensions said she had not proved that she had been in continuous employment in the UK for the previous five years. This was despite having worked or been a student in Britain since 1997.
>In April, her application for child benefit was also rejected when officials learned she had been denied income support. Hackney council then demanded she repay £200 in overpaid housing benefit.
>Coroner Dr Andrew Reid said: 'She was not in a position around the time her son was born to be actively seeking work, and was not in a position to claim Income Support, which eventually stopped her housing benefit.
>A coroner has demanded that the government takes action to prevent future deaths of disability benefit claimants, after concluding in a “ground-breaking” inquest verdict that a disabled man killed himself as a direct result of being found “fit for work”.
>It is believed to be the first time that a coroner has blamed the work capability assessment (WCA) process for directly causing the death of a claimant.
>An unemployed dad stabbed himself twice through the heart when his family faced losing their home to housing benefit cuts, an inquest heard. Desperate Richard Sanderson, 44, drew up meticulous suicide plans after learning he could no longer afford the flat he shared with his wife and nine-year-old son. The family had received a letter stating their housing benefit would be cut by £30 a month, leaving them with ‘nowhere to go’, Westminster Coroners Court heard. Mr Sanderson was found dead in the bath by wife Petra on Sunday, May 29 with three stab wounds to his chest and abdomen. A diagram showing the position of the heart in the body had been mounted on one wall and three kitchen knives were on a folding table next to the bath. Suicide notes addressed to his family and the police had been placed on his bed, along with more anatomical diagrams. Recording a verdict of suicide, coroner Fiona Wilcox described the case as ‘particularly tragic.’ She added: ‘This appears to have been done by a man who was fully compos mentis and was not suffering from a depressive illness. ‘He carried out a considered act in response to his inability to find employment and the fact that his housing benefit was about to be cut and the family would have faced having no-where to live.
>Mark Wood, 44, who had a number of complex mental health conditions, died at his home last August, months after an Atos fitness-for-work assessment found him fit for work. This assessment triggered a decision by the jobcentre to stop his sickness benefits, leaving him just £40 a week to live on. His housing benefits were stopped at around the same time.
>The Oxfordshire coroner, Darren Salter, said that although it was impossible to identify the cause of death, it was probably "caused or contributed to by Wood being markedly underweight and malnourished". He weighed 5st 8lbs (35kg) when he died; his doctor said his body mass index was not compatible with life.
>The coroner said that when David Clapson died he had no food in his stomach. Clapson’s benefits had been stopped as a result of missing one meeting at the jobcentre. He was diabetic, and without the £71.70 a week from his jobseeker’s allowance he couldn’t afford to eat or put credit on his electricity card to keep the fridge where he kept his insulin working. Three weeks later Clapson died from diabetic ketoacidosis, caused by a severe lack of insulin. A pile of CVs was found next to his body.
I get it, we don't like leeches. But forcing people to work or else not get benefits meant for the poorest (i.e. let them starve or go homeless)? Wow. It's work camps without fences.
Driving around and/or delivering things to people that are better off then they are? How is that helping people build their own human capital? The only people that helps are the people consuming those services at exploitative wages. Why exploitative? Because if this option wasn't exploitative and it actually helped them beyond making sure they don't die, they'd have chosen it for themselves.
Yes. Train bureaucrats that administer this programs and deal with those seeking welfare about these gig economy options. Make sure that those who want to engage know about them and have the ability to engage, but let's not force them 'or else'.
Imagine losing your job, having to get on welfare to feed your family, and being told (probably through an impersonal text) "15 min foot massage at 111 Anywhere street. $5. $20 an hour equivalent. Appt. in 45 min. Confirm or lose benefits."
We're better than that.
Why exploitative? Because if this option wasn't exploitative and it actually helped them beyond making sure they don't die, they'd have chosen it for themselves.
It's true that many people will choose free money + watching TV over doing things beneficial for others.
It's kind of funny how expecting welfare recipients to work is "exploitative" but expecting workers to involuntarily support welfare recipients is not. Could you explain that?
Are you willing to create value for other humans at less than your time is worth? Because that is what you are asking them to do. If it was worth their time we wouldn't have to threaten them with pain or death to incentivise them.
Value for humans works both ways...people value their own time (your watching TV example) it is true. But if they were sufficiently incentivised with added value, they would create value for others in order to improve the remainder of their own time. That's how it works. Enlightened self-interest, and all that.
> I assume that you also believe taking money from others involuntarily and giving it to non-workers is not "exploitative"?
Yes, I do because of the marginal utility of money. Taking $1000 from someone who has $10 mil. to feed a family a four for a month is not exploitative. The person with $10 mil. will not die or be in physical pain without that money. That money is worth less to them than it is to the family that very well might die, or at least be in pain, without it.
Telling someone on the brink of total poverty, where they very well might starve over the next month, that they must work or die is exploitation. Exploitation is not about taking money it is about extorting someone with the threat of pain or death. It is a sure way to destroy value in a transaction.
The alternative is to entice someone to create value for other humans through a value add transaction -- they end up with more value for themselves rather than bargaining to limit their loss through death or pain -- you know, why the rest of us that happen to be more wealthy choose to create value for others. The way to guarantee such a transaction is to make sure the person agreeing to that transaction is not making the decision to engage based on a physical threat.
I don't know why this concept is so foreign. It is the same reason protection rackets are illegal.
Friend, hunger pain and risk of homelessness are what motivate many people to drag themselves to work. Without that threat, many people choose to be unproductive, and it makes society as a whole poor. If you take too heavily from those who are productive to enable this, it dicencentivises them. This has been demonstrated repeatedly -- in the USSR, in China's old system, in Cuba, in the DPRK, in Saudi Arabia (who, with less oil money, are having serious problems), and even in the Internet's beloved Denmark ... literally over and over and over.
(ref for Denmark, since I know that will be one of the more contentious entries on my list: http://www.businessinsider.com/free-universities-and-no-stud... )
Asking them to take what someone else is willing to give them for their work, without the threat of imprisonment from the government to motivate the giving, is not asking them to work for less than they're worth. Quite the contrary, it's asking them to work for an amount that exactly reflects the value other humans assign to their labor.
People who are hungry and suffering don't revolt. They starve. The ambitious gentry and clerisy who see themselves sliding down the social ladder attempt to revolt and are usually crushed. Anyone who is hungry and suffering is incapable of organising enough to be a threat to any military or paramilitary organisation.
Are there any successful slave revolts besides Haiti, ever?
That, in my view, smacks of rationalization of widespread exploitation of an entire sector of human beings.
This forum is full of people that will not starve if they don't work -- at least not for a while. But the vast majority are doing what they can to create value in the world. Are they just better human beings than the poor who must be threatened in order to create value? Or have we built enough capital of one type or another to make the transaction of our time and effort and application of our capital worth it? An improvement of our lot?
If all of us more fortunate creatures were told that we'd never turn a profit for our efforts, how many of us would put in that effort? I would wager not many (a situation that plagued most of those socialist systems you mentioned).
The poor are put in a situation where they are asked to work but never profit. They must work to limit their loss. They must work to merely not die. It is little wonder that we have people that prefer welfare and don't do much to better their position because the alternative is to spend their time and effort pushing for -- nothing.
What I would push for is not Socialism -- which is where everybody owns the means of production which is dragging everyone down into that same pitiable state of never being able harvest your own profit for your own efforts -- but merely giving the poor a guarantee that they will not die or be in pain -- enough food, housing, medical care to live. Those that need their labor will then have to entice them to work. They have to look at how much their labor is worth to them and try and pay them based on how much profit they can wring from the value they can create -- like lawyers are paid, engineers, management, skilled workers, professionals...literally everyone else. It's not crazy, it is how 3/4s of the population in the US conducts business. It is just an extension of that strong bargaining position in the free market to those in danger of having to work for less than their time is worth for no hope of bettering their position just to merely not die.
It may mean that I have to take it on a bit of faith, but I trust that 1/4 at the bottom will work to better their position just like the rest of us if given the chance. I don't think we're any better, when it comes down to it.
Not immediately, but eventually. Also depends greatly on the person. Plenty of people making 100k+ work paycheck to paycheck, and will be in the exact position a poor person would be in (relying on credit, missing payments) immediately after losing their work. Put simply, I'm calling you on this: most people in this forum do work under threat of either losing housing/food or relying on some safety net without a job. I make really good money, and without work I'd probably be screwed in a year or two, assuming I'm willing to borrow heavily first.
> Are they just better human beings than the poor who must be threatened in order to create value? Or have we built enough capital of one type or another to make the transaction of our time and effort and application of our capital worth it? An improvement of our lot?
None of the above. Working for food, shelter, and transportation, just like everyone else.
> If all of us more fortunate creatures were told that we'd never turn a profit for our efforts, how many of us would put in that effort? I would wager not many (a situation that plagued most of those socialist systems you mentioned). The poor are put in a situation where they are asked to work but never profit. They must work to limit their loss. They must work to merely not die.
Once again, calling you on this. Unlike the socialist systems, in our system even the poor can accumulate savings and wealth, albeit at a slower rate. After I graduated school, I lived cheaply enough that I could have accumulated savings on a McDonald's wage, if I had needed to. It's all a matter of personal choices, fiscal discipline, and fiscal education. Maybe we should focus on adding appropriate personal finance education to school curriculum as a way to help people get away from the cycle of debt.
> It is little wonder that we have people that prefer welfare and don't do much to better their position because the alternative is to spend their time and effort pushing for -- nothing.
I've seen people making 100k+ spend so foolishly that they are effectively 'pushing for nothing' (zero or negative net assets). I've seen people making 20k/ea spend so wisely that they can buy a house, a car, have a child, and save. Hardly 'nothing.'
> What I would push for is not Socialism -- which is where everybody owns the means of production which is dragging everyone down into that same pitiable state of never being able harvest your own profit for your own efforts -- but merely giving the poor a guarantee that they will not die or be in pain -- enough food, housing, medical care to live.
Hey, if I could have all of those things guaranteed, even I might consider sitting around exercising my (low-cost) hobbies all day. Not beneficial to society. Also, guaranteeing those things to one class of people means threatening another with imprisonment if they don't remit a significant portion of their income to that class -- are you OK with that?
> Those that need their labor will then have to entice them to work. They have to look at how much their labor is worth to them and try and pay them based on how much profit they can wring from the value they can create -- like lawyers are paid, engineers, management, skilled workers, professionals...literally everyone else.
Trust me, professionals are only partially paid based on the profit they generate. Yes, if they were not generating profit their jobs would be eliminated, just like many lower paid jobs are automated when faced with forced wage increases. However, their salaries are set as a function of labor demand vs. labor supply, just like everyone else's. I teach SW development classes at a local college as a side-job, and I can tell you that people struggle with professional programs vs. other majors. My wife is completing a second degree, an associates in Nursing. She has commented repeatedly how she's had to work way harder to get this nursing degree than her 4-year bachelors, which was not a hard science degree (these days, nursing definitely is a hard science degree). These fields have high pay because the number of people willing and able to get into them is low, and the demand for them is high.
> It's not crazy, it is how 3/4s of the population in the US conducts business. It is just an extension of that strong bargaining position in the free market to those in danger of having to work for less than their time is worth for no hope of bettering their position just to merely not die. It may mean that I have to take it on a bit of faith, but I trust that 1/4 at the bottom will work to better their position just like the rest of us if given the chance. I don't think we're any better, when it comes down to it.
For the reasons stated above, I disagree with the proposition that a lack of a social safety net that doesn't require work as a precondition puts them in a position with "no hope of bettering their position just to merely not die." Asking them to do work to receive benefits (as long as we don't specify what work we're asking them to do) is not asking them to work for less than they're worth, it is actually asking them to work for exactly what their labor is worth, with the added benefit of a bonus above that value being taken from another person and given to them in the form of a social safety net.
Actually, now that I think about it, since they're receiving this benefit, we're asking them to work for more than their labor is worth, and it's actually the person paying for the benefit that we're asking to work for less than they're worth ... and we're asking the person paying for this benefit to do it under the threat of imprisonment if they decide not to pay.
Yeah, a year or two. That is a much different situation than the poor are in.
And this is the problem...you think the situation is the same. So do a lot of other well meaning people. They think that the poor are not making the decisions you would make so they must be stupid or not capable of reason somehow. But the fact is, facing hunger in a year is much, much different than facing hunger next week. Having some sort of built up human capital, be it a degree or work experience or connections or whatever is much different than having none of those things to fall back on. Having connections, be it family or friends, that can help you out in a pinch is much different than everyone you know balancing on the razor's edge too.
Missing a payment on your car in a month or two if you lose your job and making uncomfortable decisions is much different than not being able to eat or put gas in your car and leads to much different calculations.
It is the myth that we are all in the same boat that allows us to vilify those stupid poor people who can't just do what needs to be done to get themselves out of their situation.
>in our system even the poor can accumulate savings and wealth, albeit at a slower rate.
Perhaps they can, but at what cost?
>I've seen people making 100k+ spend so foolishly that they are effectively 'pushing for nothing' (zero or negative net assets).
Me too. But you mistake 'spending on consumption (enjoyment of their time)' with working for nothing. That's not nothing -- they are getting value for their money and time. That's not saving but I am talking about being in a situation where you have to transact with someone or lose everything. Very, very different.
> threatening another with imprisonment if they don't remit a significant portion of their income to that class -- are you OK with that?
Yes, because if they are like your friends above and they truly get themselves into trouble, they'd have that guarantee as well.
>professionals are only partially paid based on the profit they generate.
Partially, in this case, makes all of the difference.
> labor demand vs. labor supply, just like everyone else's
Except the poor. Sure their labor is more plentiful and therefore cheaper, but cost of that labor is depressed because their bargaining position, their best alternative to a negotiated agreement, is negative. That is a big weight on the scale.
> it is actually asking them to work for exactly what their labor is worth
Again, it isn't because of the 'or else' chip on the scale. Besides, should we accept jobs in our society that don't pay enough to support the maintenance of the capital it uses? We don't offer to subsidize the cost of ink for a printing press or gas for a logistics company, why should we subsidize the cost of human labor?
You can make 20k flipping burgers at McDonalds. 20k is enough to build up a safety cushion. I'm a big fan of Dave Ramsey's, I listen to his show, and couples with a family income of ~40k call in literally every day having paid down ALL of their debt and built up a 3-6 month emergency fund (cash!). If they are willing to indebt themselves deeply, they have the same 'year or two' that I'd have if I indebted myself deeply. I have friends who have accomplished this, on 40k/year. Granted, the cost of living in the midwest is fairly low, but wages are also lower than elsewhere (our local McDonalds pays $9.50/hr starting, Wal-Mart is in the same ballpark).
> Perhaps they can, but at what cost?
I know exactly what it feels like. We were not in a good financial situation when we got married. Beans & rice, rice & beans. But we dug ourselves out and bought a modest house. No, we didn't go to movies, on vacations, or out to eat; we didn't have high end smartphones (even 'good' -- mine had a cracked screen), nice cars (we drove rustbuckets), remotely up-to-date PCs, or decent clothes (I wore my clothes to the point that they began to shred). I regularly caulked our brittle siding and tarred our aging roof to keep the water out, bondo'd our cars, and fixed their myriad mechanical problems with shitty, nearly free Harbor Freight tools. So yes, they can, and at a cost that I know and that I've paid myself.
>I've seen people making 100k+ spend so foolishly that they are effectively 'pushing for nothing' (zero or negative net assets).
Me too. But you mistake 'spending on consumption (enjoyment of their time)' with working for nothing. That's not nothing -- they are getting value for their money and time. That's not saving but I am talking about being in a situation where you have to transact with someone or lose everything. Very, very different.
Not different at all. If that fool loses his job, he'll lose every last thing he has, because he doesn't own it and the bank will take it back. Yes, his path to homelessness was more comfortable, but he'll end up in the same place.
> threatening another with imprisonment if they don't remit a significant portion of their income to that class -- are you OK with that?
* Yes, because if they are like your friends above and they truly get themselves into trouble, they'd have that guarantee as well.*
If they don't want that guarantee (I don't), should they have option to opt-out? Personally, I find the idea of forcibly taking from one person to give to another abhorrent. Especially when you will send the person to prison if the resist the taking, and to their grave if they resist the prison. I love charities, I give to charities, and I think they're a great solution. I'm proud to live in an area with extremely high charitable giving (Grand Rapids, MI), and I love to be a part of that. I do not love being forced into it, and if a government wants to implement something like that, it should be done at a more local level (certainly no higher than the state), so that the people effected by the decision have a greater voice in it.
>professionals are only partially paid based on the profit they generate. Partially, in this case, makes all of the difference. > labor demand vs. labor supply, just like everyone else's
Except the poor. Sure their labor is more plentiful and therefore cheaper, but cost of that labor is depressed because __their bargaining position, their best alternative to a negotiated agreement, is negative__. That is a big weight on the scale.
Not sure what you're trying to say here: __ .... __.
> it is actually asking them to work for exactly what their labor is worth Again, it isn't because of the 'or else' chip on the scale. Besides, should we accept jobs in our society that don't pay enough to support the maintenance of the capital it uses? We don't offer to subsidize the cost of ink for a printing press or gas for a logistics company, why should we subsidize the cost of human labor?
No, we should not subsidize the cost of the labor. Exactly my point. Many professionals work 60+ hours/week, and even at crap jobs like McDonalds, 60+ hr/week pays $30k+, which is ample income to support a person.
If you are single with no dependents, live in a cheap area, and live close to work, maybe.
We are having a general discussion (thank you for the thoughtful discussion, BTW), and not to get too deep into specific policy plans but I'd like to see a two tiered approach.
First tier: Long term employees living off of the wage. There is a minimum, living wage. It should be enough to support a person and at least one dependent at 40 hours a a week. There should be a national living wage which represents the absolute floor and state and local living wages that can add to that based on local cost of living differences.
Second tier: Short term employees or employees not living off of the wage. No minimum wage at all at this tier. Intended for teenagers, the elderly that just want to work, the independently wealthy or otherwise supported that just want to work for pocket money or because the structure of the organization doesn't allow for volunteers.
This would be enforced simply by the government charging businesses if their employees file for welfare for the cost of the welfare + administrative cost + a small penalty.
If your business requires long term, well trained employees you'd better pay them enough that the public is not subsidizing them.
However, if you can get away with using teenagers, college students, or the bored elderly, and people that generally don't have to work to survive if they don't want to, then more power to you. Pay what you want.
>Not different at all. If that fool loses his job, he'll lose every last thing he has, because he doesn't own it and the bank will take it back. Yes, his path to homelessness was more comfortable, but he'll end up in the same place.
Considering how much he's making, I'd say he probably has some sort of personal human capital built up and is not in nearly as dire a situation as someone who hasn't had that opportunity that ends up at zero or worse.
> I find the idea of forcibly taking from one person to give to another abhorrent.
Really? I find the idea of paying to live in a society that provides much more value for any amount of money I can give perfectly acceptable -- certainly more desirable than the alternative. You don't think you'd benefit from living in a society where no one would have to worry about starving, going homeless, or affording their meds?
I'm not advocating this out of the goodness of my heart or to prevent human suffering. It is a cold calculation that happens to look like altruism. The highest expected utility for a system of transactions (the market) can only be achieved if the group of transactions is overall positive. The only way to guarantee this result is if every transaction within that system is positive. The only way to guarantee that every transaction is positive is if all parties to the transaction see a net gain in value. When the best alternative to a negotiated agreement is negative and the other party knows this, they can exploit it (and they will if they are rational). This means one party loses and the other gains value or utility. This is the situation the desperately poor are in when they sell their time. They are in a known bad position. What was a guarantee is now a question. Does the gain in value of the one party override the loss in value of the other? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It is hard to guarantee a win-win transaction in every case for many different reasons (information asymmetry, externalities not taken into account etc.) but in this case it is easy and it affects a huge swath of our society -- just guarantee they can walk away from a transaction without coming to harm. Just that simple. Looks altruistic but is really about maximizing overall utility. Why play with finding the spot where exploitation tips the scale into overall negative value if we don't have to?
The article doesn't propose threatening anyone with pain or death. Did you read it?
All it proposes is requiring people receiving free money to be willing to work for money instead (same as the people who are forced to give them free money).
The person with $10 mil. will not die or be in physical pain without that money. That money is worth less to them than it is to the family that very well might die, or at least be in pain, without it.
What about the marginal utility of time? The person with $10M is probably working hard. In contrast, the welfare recipient with copious amounts of free time will not die or be in pain if they spend some time working.
Why do the time rich get a free pass while the money rich are forced to contribute?
(The article explicitly advocates that people who will be in pain, i.e. those physically unable to work, would be exempt from such requirements.)
I don't know why this concept is so foreign. It is the same reason protection rackets are illegal.
A protection racket is when you threaten a person with violence if they don't give you money. Kind of like how tax financed welfare works, and not remotely like how the proposed "uber for welfare" works.
In a protection racket, I am worse off than I would be if the racketeer and I never encountered each other. In the proposed uber for welfare scheme the recipient is better off.
Everyone gets 24 hours in a day. The 'copious amounts' of free time of welfare recipients is capped. The same cannot be said of monetary wealth. Therefore the marginal utility of time has a lower limit that does not exist for the marginal utility of monetary wealth.
>In a protection racket, I am worse off than I would be if the racketeer and I never encountered each other. In the proposed uber for welfare scheme the recipient is better off.
In both scenarios the disadvantaged party cannot walk away from the transaction without loss in value. In this case, your implicit definition of 'better off' is 'lose less than they would otherwise'.
If you have just crawled out of a desert on the verge of death of dehydration and I sell you a cup of water for $100,000 and a pinky finger you may be 'better off' under your definition. Would you say that it is overall a value positive transaction?
So what?
If we were to impose some cap on income (say $1B/year) would it suddenly be "exploitative" to charge any income tax? If not, then this argument is a red herring.
Would you say that it is overall a value positive transaction?
Yes.
Of course, your analogy is silly - a better comparison would be a resort near the desert which charges $2.50 for a bottle of water. All anyone is proposing is that welfare people get a job that pays the same rates that the workers supporting them get paid.
Maybe not at $1B/year (that marginal dollar is damn near infinitesimal at that point). But maybe if the cap was, say, $50K (or in that rough ballpark) a year characterizing income tax as exploitative could be a concept worthy of exploring. Especially if we are talking about taking 40% their usable income or more as the article is proposing for the poor assuming they are expecting them to work 8 hours a day.
So in your view, all welfare recipients are just sitting around watching TV?
"The person with $10M is probably working hard"
why? what makes you say that? Do millionaires work extra hard compared to everyone else?
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/04/13/get-a-job-most-wel...
Well, if the stream of incomes directed at rentiers were instead redirected towards welfare recipients, workers would have to do no more supporting than they do now.
This could be done by:
* Raising land taxes
* Taxing wealth
* Taxing yield bearing assets
* Remove carried interest rule.
And then paying for welfare with that.
Or we could keep pretending that billionaire moochers aren't more expensive for society than welfare recipients.
Could those workers get a similar income and similar working conditions without a functional society? Unless those workers are subsistence farmers, the answer is "no". Society is supporting them, so forcing workers to support society is not exploitative.
Either you can pay them a wage worth working for, or you have a so crippling structural problem that this whole discussion is a distraction.
If human labour is no longer worth the money it needs to sustain humans, should we really centre our whole society around it?
Paraphrasing H.L. Mencken: U.S. Libertarians/Republicans can almost be defined as someone with the irrational fear that some poor person, somewhere is getting something they don't deserve.
Hate to do this to you, but if you were on the other side of the issue someone would have asked, and I honestly haven't seen data on it. Do you have any stats/facts/references to back this up? To be blunt, I'm just old enough that I remember societies that tried this, and in their implementations it drove everybody's standard of living toward what we would consider poverty, so I am expressing a bit of doubt here. "They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work" (old Soviet political joke).
I think we all win when each of us, even the undeserving, get to live at a base level of existence without fear. Off the top of my head my understanding of history is such that societal stability is best accomplished when there are lots of people living in misery. It's worth the expenditure of tax money to ensure my neighbor is not living in misery.
Solzhenitsyn said that the quality of a society can be determined by how it treats its prisoners. I expand upon this a bit by including the poor and powerless.
What other data do you want? You ask for hard statistics but don't specify exactly what you statistics you want. I have no expertise in the area of social development, economics, or other social sciences. I'm a mathematician. The only hard data I can possibly give is to do a Google search. But you are just as well equipped to do this.
This forum is not an academic journal article. It's a collection of non-experts giving their opinions based on their perceptions of the world. The goal is to have a well reasoned position but the expectation for every opinion to be backed up by hard data, references, and statistics is not reasonable. No one can possibly be held to such a standard for all opinions.
Many, many issues are so complex that there is no obvious statistic that can be used to settle the matter. In such a case all one can do make a conclusion the best they can with the knowledge that they don't have all the information. But one is not then precluded from holding or expressing and opinion.
- USSR:
The USSR had a centrally planned economy, with centrallly planned wages designed to limit differentiation between those at the top of the income scale and those at the bottom. A typical family lived in a ~10x10 single room apartment. Often these apartments did not have kitchens, and never 'bedrooms' (I do mean 'single room.). Even though the workers were 'paid', they often could not buy basic things like food, soap, and toilet paper due to chronic underproduction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_apartment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Soviet_Union
http://reason.com/blog/2015/04/06/revealed-the-final-stage-o...
http://articles.philly.com/1989-07-21/news/26131831_1_soap-p...
- Cuba
Cuba's economy is dominated by state-run enterprises, with 76% public sector employment. In Cuba, employees in some skilled professions that are not favored by the state, like medical doctors, work in slave-like conditions. GDP per capita is only $10k PPP, less than 1/5th that of the USA. References:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/mary-ogrady-cubas-slave-trade-in...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Cuba
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States
- China
In the mid 1990s, China's state-owned economy was teetering on bankruptcy. As an experiment, China began to allow select cities to ignore the old rules on enterprise management, wages, guaranteed employment, etc. By the late 90's, these cities had spawned some of the largest appliance manufacturers in the world, and China began to implement these policies more broadly. Since the reforms, China's GDP has risen tenfold, with productivity increases accounting for nearly half of the rise. During the reform period, PPP per capita incomes have grown at ~6.6% annually.
http://www.economist.com/node/21528262
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_economic_reform
That is what I would consider two well-documented examples countries with large social apparatuses that resulted in disaster, and one that significantly improved the standard of living for everyone by scrapping their old guarantees. I was hoping that you could provide me with something similar to support your views.
It seems as though you are under the impression that I was claiming the converse is true. I was not. Canada, Japan, Denmark, France, UK, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Austria are examples of countries that are nice places to live in for the average person that have a strong social safety net for the people.
Canada - much of the 'welfare' is paid by the province, not the federal government. The social assistance program is aimed at temporary financial need, and requires people to seek employment:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_programs_in_Canada
http://www.mcss.gov.on.ca/en/mcss/programs/social/
UK: https://www.rt.com/news/uk-welfare-jobless-benefits-535/
Japan - Japanese society actually attempts to shame people into going back into the workforce: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2011/09/25/national/media-n...
I don't have time to go down the rest of the list, but my point is that there are few, if any places where somebody can get a 'free ride' while doing little/no work, and certainly no place that's nice to live in (I'm assuming that since you think workfare is a bad idea, you consider 'good' to be the absence of a work requirement).
How about a Guaranteed Minimum Income for every American, which will do far more to address poverty as well as raise wages (if you're already receiving money, you'll be able to demand a higher wage for working a job).
Screw welfare, and its tenuous political existence. Support everyone and the government doesn't need to invent more regulations and punish poor people.
Actually, yes, pretty much.
"Derek Khanna (@DerekKhanna) is a former congressional staffer and IP litigation lawyer in Silicon Valley who spearheaded a campaign that enacted the last technology bill into law (P.L. 113-144), and Cesar Conda (@CesarConda) is a former Senate chief of staff and White House policy adviser, founding principal and policy adviser of Navigators Global."
> Screw welfare, and its tenuous political existence. Support everyone and the government doesn't need to invent more regulations
A guaranteed minimum income will without question lead to higher prices on consumer goods, putting us in the same position as before.
The regulations will not stop under this model - they will simply change. Where regulation exists now to keep prices artificially high and interest rates artificially low, the regulation policy resulting from a minimum pre-tax income will be that of price controls and the rationing of goods.
True.
> putting us in the same position as before.
False. It only puts us "in the same position as before" if prices of goods demanded increase by the same proportion as incomes of the persons demanding them for all goods, which isn't plausible in any redistributive scheme (which Basic Income and Guaranteed Minimum Income schemes are), since there is overlap in goods demanded in populations who see different proportional changes in income from the scheme.
In general, the most plausible result for the key target demographic (those at the bottom of the distribution) is that they will see more income as the result of the scheme but that the purchasing power will, while increased, be increased by less than the increase in nominal income would suggest because of price increases.
Why? BI does not increase money supply, it takes from the rich and gives to the poor. An increase in the money supply is the only thing pretty much guaranteed to increase inflation.
BI will definitely have localized effects on prices. It may increase money velocity, which could cause inflation. However, that's not "without question", and almost definitely wouldn't "put us in the same position as before"
An increase in the money supply _is_ inflation - the very definition of it.
> BI will definitely have localized effects on prices.
Yes, I said this in my OP. It will lead to increases in prices for consumer goods in particular, as opposed to other goods. If every consumer has $X,000 dollars to work with that they didn't have before, then demand for consumer goods is going to rise, leading to lower inventory and therefore, higher prices.
And it's not every consumer that has $X,000 more. It's only the poor consumers. The middle class has their BI taxed back. And the poor are a very small portion of the economy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workfare_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_%28Reilly%29_v_Secretary_of_...
(the latter is particularly odious; having been told by a court that it owed people £130m in back-dated benefits, the government retroactively changed the law to avoid paying them. This is almost certainly a human rights violation but that litigation has not finished yet).
There has to be a social safety net, but I think it's a valid goal to encourage welfare recipients to work if they are able. One thing we should definitely do is reform the "vertical cliff" of payments, where once you make above a certain threshold, you stop receiving all benefits. That's a definite disincentive to get a better job past a certain point.
Not to mention that the flood of workers forced into this position will necessarily bid down the hourly rates.
[1] It's interesting how the gig economy can reduce sticky wages, making inflationary stimulus unnecessary.
No one is forced to do anything.
I totally missed that part of the article.
If that's true, then these folks will find no work via the gig economy.
We also don't live in a society in which every apparently able bodied person has the emotional/intellectual/motivational capacity to work.
The article has this to say about that issue: "Work requirements, however, should not unfairly punish people who are physically or mentally unable to complete gig economy jobs. The gig economy can often provide flexible work for those previously considered unable to work, but exemptions would still be available as needed."
Did you read it?
I don't want those who don't want to work alongside disgruntled people who are there because they are forced to be there.
Welfare recipients are disgruntled people who are unpleasant to be around?
I thought they were just regular folks who were down on their luck, who wanted to work but are unable to find a job.
Great to write on paper that we will exempt those who are mentally/physically unable to work. Then we will end up with a bunch of edge cases that force a government agency to be created that will end up drawing up rules/regulations in order to arbitrate these decisions. We will employ enough people in order to process/monitor all exempt people. It would in my opinion just be better to ensure a base level of existence regardless of ability.
I've met a number of welfare recipients who don't want to work and it is a good thing that they aren't working due to their toxic personalities. Then there are people who are on welfare who are great to be around. It's a sufficiently large group that you'll find all kinds.
In regards to your first sentence. Surely you don't believe that every person who can be employed can find work. I don't think anyone really believes that it is always the case that the number of people who wants jobs is less than the available number of jobs. Even if the system proposed is enacted then some people will still not be able to find work since there aren't enough jobs for everyone. We will add another layer of bureaucracy to ensure that those who claim they can't find work really can't find work. This already exists to some extent with unemployment benefits but would need to be expanded to really make sure no one is taking advantage of the system.
If a person chooses to be toxic to those around them, why is that a behavior that should result in us giving them money?
Lets make this concrete. Consider a racist who chooses to be an asshole to every non-white person around them, and who also lives in a very diverse area such as Silicon Valley or NYC (and refuses to move to a very white area). They are also sexist to all the women who choose to work outside the home as well. Their voluntarily chosen behavior patterns leave them unemployable.
Why is this person deserving of free money taken from productive people of color who choose to pleasantly work for the benefit of others?
(I have of course chosen this person to be as offensive to left wing sensibilities as possible.)
In regards to your first sentence. Surely you don't believe that every person who can be employed can find work.
I do actually believe vastly more people could be working than currently are, because I used to live in India and I saw vastly higher labor utilization. There are a huge number of jobs that simply don't get done in the US.
E.g., I have a maid clean my flat twice a month, but I'd like it done twice a week (or daily, like most Indian professionals do). However, labor is simply too scarce in the US for that to be reasonable. Perhaps some of those welfare recipients who are "great to be around" can find me and help me out, should we implement the author's proposal.
However, if such a proposal only puts half the people on welfare back to work, that's still a good outcome.
In your sixth paragraph you again deliberately distort what I wrote. It is not reasonable to believe that number of potential workers < number of available jobs at all times. Nowhere is it implied that more people can't be employed than currently are. There is a difference between more and all.
You are not rich enough to afford someone to clean for you as frequently as you like so you conclude labor is way too scarce? A solution you endorse is to force people to service your needs in exchange for welfare benefits. In essence to perform labor at substandard prices. Perhaps you should just make more money so that you can afford the market rate for the labor you want. Just get a better paying job or create more utility for society. As it currently stands the market doesn't think you provide enough value to justify compensating you enough to sustain the lifestyle you want.
Creating a system of forced labor does not make for a reasonable solution and would lead to the country being a worse place to live.
I acknowledged that I misunderstood you in the very comment you replied to. I explicitly acknowledged both your belief in the existence of toxic welfare recipients (in paragraphs 2,3 and 4) and those that are "great to be around" in paragraph 8.
Apart from explicitly acknowledging and responding to your points, what else can I do to make you believe I'm not "demonize[ing] and distort[ing]" your opinions?
There is a difference between more and all.
I explicitly acknowledge and address this point in my last sentence.
You are not rich enough to afford someone to clean for you as frequently as you like so you conclude labor is way too scarce?
Scarcity is when we don't have as much of something as we want. So yes - labor is scarce.
A solution you endorse is to force people to service your needs in exchange for welfare benefits.
On the contrary, I'm proposing forcing fewer people to service the needs of others. Currently I'm forced to service welfare people's needs; but if a welfare person has a toxic personality and is unwilling to work, I'd like to end that use of force.
Also, as far as paying market rates for labor, this article (and me, in agreeing with it) is explicitly advocating that we bring wages closer to market. Again, did you read it? It proposes making information more available (by helping welfare recipients access the gig economy) and reducing subsidies that shrink the labor force (via workfare requirements).
I explicitly stated that one finds all types of people amongst welfare recipients as it is a sufficiently large set of people. The statement that I apparently don't believe welfare recipients are regular people is inflammatory. The wording you used seeks to paint me as someone who doesn't think poor people are "regular folks". (Using the colloquial definition of this phrase.)
Yes labor is scare in the strict meaning of the phrase. Labor is way too scarce? Hardly can this be concluded because you can't afford to pay people enough to do the work you want.
Exactly. So why "rethink the entire safety net, affecting nearly every federal entitlement program, so that it is oriented around the gig economy"?
The gig economy isn't going to change the fundamental problem that there is not enough work, there won't ever again be enough work, and we can't centre our measurement of human worth around work. If we just keep pretending that's not the case we'll either end up with bullshit jobs that create no worth and are subsidized by the companies offering them (at best just a more convoluted form of benefits, paid by corporations directly); or with even more working poor that have a job and still depend on government benefits. Or both.
Well, I can think of worse ideas not proposed in jest (some of which have been implemented), such as the Bush tax cuts.
Of course, many of those worse ideas come from the same general (or, in the specific case of the Bush tax cuts, in part the same specific) place. [0]
[0] Cesar Conda being one of the two authors of this piece https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesar_Conda
https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/INDPRO https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/IPMAN http://www.klamathbasincrisis.org/agriculture/2012/productiv...
No one is suggesting we all do each other's laundry. Instead, the article is suggesting that people currently producing nothing will do laundry for people who actually are producing things.
This is called a "job". If we could find a job for everyone, we wouldn't be talking about unemployment. Unemployment is when people are not able to find a job.
It also proposes that if a person claims to be unemployed, but actually just refuses to take work, that their welfare payments should be stopped. But surely you aren't discussing those people, right?
The process of determining 'refusing' to take work is surprisingly fraught as well. But again the question arises: if you cut off the money that someone is using to eat, what happens to them? They do not magically find a job that pays enough to eat.
It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great city, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and cabin doors, crowded with beggars, all in rags and importuning every passenger for an alms. These beggars, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in strolling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants: who as they grow up also turn thieves for want of work.
I think it is agreed by all parties that this is, in the present deplorable state of the country, a very great additional grievance; and, therefore, whoever could find out a fair, cheap, and easy method of making these beggars sound, useful members of society, would deserve so well of the public as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation.
- Uber for law enforcement - Uber for constitutional rights