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Comment by luckylion | Hacker News Reader

> putting a lot of undue and costly burden on those who work, while not doing all that much for those whom we might want to benefit

I suppose "all that much" is the key term. Is European style redistribution (aka a nice flat, utilities, TV and smartphone, clothing, health insurance, food and cash money to spend on whatever you please) not all that much?

It's not like we're wasting 90% of taxes on administrative overhead, so I'm not sure what could be improved there, without adding more "undue and costly burden" on those who work, unless you're suggesting taxing e.g. capital gains rather than income.

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The thing is...we nearly have that dream already in many lcol areas. Take Cleveland, Detroit, or Pittsburgh for example. Wages at the low end are rising to the point where if you're making less than $13-14/hour, you're actively doing something wrong. $800/month for a 2 bed apartment in an ok location (or a 1 bed in a good location), cheap groceries, a not great but passable public transportation system. If you ignore healthcare(!), you can actually live on that pretty well and put some cash away for emergencies. The problems only come in when you have health problems or have a family (childcare).

To your point on wasting tax money, have you seen the defense budget lately? Can fix those two issues and them some with some moderate cuts. Capital gains taxed the same as earned income would help too, but won't make enough to solve the big issues.

> If you ignore healthcare(!), you can actually live on that pretty well and put some cash away for emergencies.

For sure. I didn't understand the comment I replied to to mean those who work though. That (including healthcare) is what you have in Europe if you don't work at all.

I wasn't saying that tax money is wasted, quite the opposite, I was saying that most of the money is not in overhead, that is, it's reaching its intended recipients. As for cutting the defense budget in the US, I'm torn. On the one hand: easy savings. On the other hand: a lot of the US' economic position in the world depends on being a/the super power. I don't know how much and how large the military edge has to be, so it may be possible to cut the spending by half and not lose a lot in economic advantages, but it may also be much closer coupled.

> That (including healthcare) is what you have in Europe if you don't work at all.

I assume that this refers to unemployment insurance, which is often provided for a limited time, and/or requires you to be actively looking for work. One of the issues with the European model of social insurance is precisely that those who are working at the low-end of the labor market are not included in this kind of redistribution. Enforced unionization and strict labor regulations are then used to make up for this, but that means losing flexibility precisely where it's most needed. You can witness the outcome in places like France, where the poorest and most vulnerable are locked out of the labor market altogether leading to huge society-wide issues.

> As for cutting the defense budget in the US, I'm torn.

You could cut a lot of the defense budget in the US if the US's allies started paying their fair share. Of course, paying for US allies' defense comes with foreign policy advantages for the US so perhaps this arrangement is also "fair" in a way.

> I assume that this refers to unemployment insurance, which is often provided for a limited time, and/or requires you to be actively looking for work.

I'm in Germany, unemployment insurance has a time limit, and does require you to look for work, but the benefits are based on your previous salaries, what I was referring to is general welfare. It does have a provision that requires you to look for work as well, but it's rather theoretical, and unless you're basically taking a dump on their desk and tell them to go shove it, you're not going to have your benefits cut. The largest constraint is that you need permission to go extended holidays.

I'm not suggesting it's a great long-term idea to incentivize not contributing to society, or that it's not costly for those paying for the party, I was originally just pointing out that we do a lot to redistribute "the fruits of labor", and that it does reach the intended recipients, as I wasn't sure how to understand your statement.

>You could cut a lot of the defense budget in the US if the US's allies started paying their fair share

Yeah. Either that, or you could maybe, like, not have an empire and cut back on the military adventurism? But I see that may be a hard sell in a society in which all the mainstream media just frickin LOVE war. Really, there's nothing just like a nice little war! Or at least bombing a few poor people now and then. It just makes for the best reporting. Also, the military-industrial complex needs to feed. And they seem to be quite cozy with the media-industrial complex. So it's a win-win scenario really. Except for the poor people of course, both at home and abroad.

> That (including healthcare) is what you have in Europe if you don't work at all.

No, if you don't work you don't have healthcare, only emergency care that I think it's similar to the one in US. Also the quality and availability of healthcare in Europe is degrading fast, mostly because there is no free lunch and it is impossible to cover unlimited medical care for everyone, it would cost more than the entire GBP of each country.

> No, if you don't work you don't have healthcare, only emergency care that I think it's similar to the one in US.

No, really, you do. I'm speaking for Germany here, if you're unemployed and on long term welfare, the state pays for your health insurance (and it's at a subsidized rate), you have the exact same health insurance as any normal employee that is using the public health insurance (which is the super majority, only a few industries, the self-employed and high-salary employees can opt for private insurance instead).

Then please call it Germany, not Europe and we're all good.

It's not a German specialty though, it's pretty far spread in Europe. Happy to be educated where the unemployed do not have health insurance though.

European-style redistribution is extremely costly for what it achieves. It means that the government has to take or transfer a sizeable fraction of GDP via taxation, while also burdening the economy as a whole with excess regulation (e.g. the firm size regulations that were mentioned elsewhere in the comments, and many others). It would be very surprising if there was no way of achieving comparable results with less burden on others.

It will be very surprising if there is a way to achieve comparable results with significantly less burden on others. European countries have looked for it for 40 years now.

European countries are democracies. Change is incredibly slow and often incredibly resisted. You act as if European countries were lead by some philosopher kinds in search of the perfect system.

Look at how hard it was for German to reform its social system in 90/00s for example. And German was one of the countries that actually achieved significant reforms while many others didn't.

> European countries have looked for it for 40 years now.

They really haven't. Classical liberalism, while perhaps more popular than in the U.S., is still a niche political stance in Europe. The 1980s saw a wave in liberalization and deregulation, and that's when stuff like NIT or UBI reached its peak in popularity.

> Is European style redistribution (aka a nice flat, utilities, TV and smartphone, clothing, health insurance, food and cash money to spend on whatever you please)

As an European, I have to ask what exactly does this refer to?

German welfare. Rent (~45-50sqm, but larger flats for a single person aren't uncommon) and utilities etc are paid, and you get 350-430€ a month for food + whatever you want to spend it on.

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