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Comment by beerandt | Hacker News Reader

Not universally, but it's hard not judge when you see what some people are buying with their (restricted) benefits card(s), and then what they ring up separately and choose to spend their cash on.

I think it depends largely on how much you're exposed to it.

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Is it also acceptable to judge billionaires who take money from taxpayers for worker retraining / property tax breaks instead of spending their own cash?

Of course it is. A rational person can understand that both the poor and the rich sometimes misuse earmarked government funds (although they generally do so in different contexts), and recognize that both are wrong.

Yes- why wouldn't it be?

Generally it's the billionaires making 3% or whatever of every dollar that's getting run through those benefit cards.

But that doesn't mean that tax incentives or contracts already agreed upon shouldn't be honored.

Be upset at your government for bribing a business if you think it's a bad political decision, but it's just as rational for the business to accept it as it is for anyone to accept Snap or any other benefit.

When you start justifying $ redistribution for everything under the sun, don't be surprised if some of it gets redistributed in ways you disagree with.

It is incredibly arrogant to believe you know enough about their lives to judge them.

Further, if other people presumed to stick their nose in your business in the same way to judge you, I'm fairly sure you'd be very offended. And rightly so, because it would be very rude.

It's pretty easy not to judge people for buying stuff with money that they have. It's called freedom, you know?

The root of the problem is with the judger, for thinking that money from the government is somehow less worthy than money from other sources (wages, inheritance, government-subsidized business wages, etc).

When they skimp on what they buy for their kids so they can buy what name brand junk they want for themselves with the balance, and then spend cash on something like expensive earbuds, or one of the vice-lane purchases, I'm going to judge.

Freedom means freedom to make poor decisions, but when that money was given to you by taxpayers and is specifically earmarked to feed your kids, not spending it on your kids makes you a bad person.

Here's an interesting article on it: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/why-do-poor-people-waste-...

In short, it talks about how in US poor people are being judged as moral failures. Buying "display items" like expensive handbags makes them look less poor. So it is an investment because when they look less poor, others treat them better. Others being predominantly people with power over them - bureaucrats, managers and so on.

(the article also discusses racism)

EDIT: and you see this at all levels of wealth too - there's certain expectation of a lawyer arriving in Mercedes or BMW, otherwise some people will think them incompetent, for example.

Yes, the power of anecdote over data. The vast, vast majority of people who receive these benefits use them as intended. I know that it's virtually impossible to get people to stop letting their day-to-day interactions inform their position on welfare benefits, but please at least try and look at the program as a whole, and not individual uses of said program.

That's why the key is to help people understand the cost and benefits of the system overall and not try to change their perspective on individuals.

If the system is effective for the vast majority and the cost of those abusing the system is less than the cost to prevent the abuse then that's generally a win. (Of course you have to be careful of second order effects and unintended consequences. If people can easily get away with abuse will abuse of the system grow?)

In other words, you don't need to convince people that abuse of the system isn't wrong or that it is impossible, i.e. the "don't judge" comments, you need to convince them that the system is effective in both costs and outcomes.

Ironic how uncharitable you're being while accusing others of the same.

It's pretty easy to understand why someone who perceives themselves as working hard and paying taxes would be upset when someone else seems to be using their government benefits to buy more than the "bare necessities" without the hard work.

Whether that perspective is helpful, good, or correct is a different matter but it's certainly not an affront to "freedom" as you mentioned. Money from the government might not be less worthy but it does come at the cost of someone else.

> Money from the government might not be less worthy but it does come at the cost of someone else.

This is partially true at best. Spending does not equal revenue, and it doesn't need to. The best way to think about government taxation is that is money that is collected and destroyed. Then new money is printed to pay for government services.

In other words, the government spending money did not take any additional money out of your pocket...in fact, for the past 40 years, for the most part, the government has been trying to put money back in your pocket through tax cuts. Of course, we are now at the point where another tax cut doesn't effect 70% of tax payers because their tax burden is so low or non-existent.

Regardless of the actual policies and intentions, a person who pays money to the government in taxes is going to see someone getting money from the government as being partially funded, or taken, from themselves.

For what it's worth though I agree with you. Government programs should be funded and planned based on net-benefit to society not strictly on an individual idea of fairness.

An example would be homelessness or drug rehab programs where it ends up being cheaper and better for society to help people than to continuously ignore and/or punish them.

It's not that money from government is less worthy. It's that money from government came from my wallet, thus I am entitled to an opinion. If you didn't take my money, I would have no interest in sharing my opinion with how one ought to spend it.

> It's that money from government came from my wallet

Did it though? Government spending != spending your wallet money. Because money is fungible, I can easily make the case that all of your tax dollars went to whatever you value in government, and that we borrowed the rest of the dollars to pay for these beneifts.

Well if I contribute 0.000001% or whatever to the federal budget, then I'd say I contribute 0.000001% to whatever welfare payment anyone receives. Money may be fungible, but when you pool money and decide to spend it, everyone from whom it's pooled gets a say.

But you don't. You get a vote. That is the point of representative democracy.

Is my vote not the say? If I am a christian and I don't want my money going towards abortion, then I'm going to vote for candidates who support that. That anyone should argue that I should not have that say is frankly scary.

And yes, because it's money from my pocket (as I explained), if someone asked me directly, I would have opinions on how it ought to be spent.

Everyone's entitled to an opinion, no matter what the situation. That's called freedom, too. What you are also entitled to is a vote, and you can feel free to vote for politicians who will enact your agenda, which seems to be holding poor people accountable.

But that doesn't really have anything to do with whether or not your attitude is actually constructive. You seem to be stuck in the 80s era of Reaganomics/welfare queens thinking, which has since proven to be incredibly ineffectual, destructive, and misery-causing.

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