Comment by forensic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by forensic | Hacker News Reader

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Politics and morality are intimately related.

There are SOME free market ideologues who believe that unrestrained corporations will enrich the poor, however I believe they are in the minority. You may be one of them.

The majority of libertarians believe that individual property rights are sacrosanct and that it is wrong to forcibly redistribute wealth to prevent poverty, hunger, suffering. This is the argument of the Tea Party to my knowledge. Am I wrong?

Right now the excess wealth is in the hands of the rich, especially the top one-tenth-of-one-percent (0.1%). Society is presented with a choice: (a) we can take it from them and redistribute it to the bottom 80%, or (b) we can let them keep it and allow people to suffer.

(a) is a moral statement, that the poverty of the poor trumps the property rights of the rich.

(b) is a moral statement, that the property rights of the rich trump the poverty of the poor.

Almost all proposed actions in this situation amount to either (a) or (b). The wealth of society can increase over time, but at any single point in time it is a fixed quantity whose distribution is intimately related to whether poor people exist or not.

So many false dilemmas. Proposition (a) only demands a non-zero level of redistribution (call this X). One might believe (a), but also believe that our current level of redistribution is greater than X.

Assuming one does believe (a), and also believes that our current level of redistribution is lower than X, it still does not follow that we need to redistribute from the rich. We could also redistribute from politically connected insiders (e.g., teachers unions, the military, real estate speculators) to the poor.

Your dichotomy of helping the poor also excludes a third possibility:

(c) Some of the poor are deserving of assistance, and some are undeserving. It is morally right to redistribute to the deserving poor, and morally wrong to redistribute to the undeserving.

(I tend to favor policies which automatically make the deserving/undeserving distinction. E.g., eliminate welfare/unemployment and replace them with unpleasant, low skill government jobs that pay welfare-like wages. Poor people willing to work get the benefits and those unwilling to work do not.)

My dilemmas aren't false they just contain assumptions. Challenging assumptions is reasonable but don't assume that the presenter is unaware of their own assumptions.

There are ALWAYS more assumptions available to be challenged. Plenty in your post for instance. Turtles (assumptions) all the way down.

For instance, if the goal is to reduce poverty, you assume that it is mathematically possibly to take money from teachers. But if teachers are already on the brink of poverty, that won't work to reduce poverty. You're creating new poverty cases as you solve old ones.

Politically connected insiders are less relevant than those who actually have the majority of the money. It's not teachers, and it's not unions. It's software entrepreneurs, MBAs, and oligopolists. They have the far majority.

For instance, if the goal is to reduce poverty, you assume that it is mathematically possibly to take money from teachers. But if teachers are already on the brink of poverty, that won't work to reduce poverty.

That's not an assumption, it's a simple fact.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=teacher+salary

Teacher wages are not even close to poverty, and they get lots of non-wage compensation which costs real money (not to mention they only work 9 months/year).

Politically connected insiders are less relevant than those who actually have the majority of the money.

On the contrary, the existence of politically connected insiders mooching off the system is evidence that we can provide more assistance to the poor without raising taxes.

Did you check your link? It looks like the average salary for teachers is about average for America.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=income+inequality+in+america

That puts them well below the mark where they'd need to be to be to place in the top X% (10-30, depending on what study you use) that own 80% of American wealth. If you believe that shuffling around the remaining 20% will work, more power to you. But I'd have to disagree.

I will, however, agree that politically connected insiders mooching off the system is DEFINITELY an issue in the US. I would just point to Corporations and the Rich in place of Teachers on your list.

I was responding to this claim: But if teachers are already on the brink of poverty, that won't work to reduce poverty.

The fact that teachers may receive average pay for below average work does not put them at the "brink of poverty".

As for finding the insiders, follow the money. Teachers and old people are some of the biggest recipients of government money.

http://usgovernmentspending.com/piechart_2009_US_total

Economics is not like religion; there are actual correct and incorrect answers. As a newer field, we not always know how to find the correct answers yet. But that isn't an excuse to start treating it more like religion and less like science.

"we can let them keep it and allow people to suffer."

Using your feelings to guide your monetary policy decisions is no better than the creationists forcing ID to be taught in schools. If your hunch is that a Keynesian approach is ideal, cool. Many would agree. But choosing it because it's the obvious "moral" choice just dumbs down the whole debate, opens the door to all sorts of emotional reactionary ignorance, and doesn't get us any closer to the right answer.

Economics is exactly like religion. There are correct and incorrect answers, but most people ignore them, and believe something that makes them feel good about their place in the world.

There are correct answers to questions like "will redistributing income from group X to group Y improve overall productivity?" but they're neither necessary nor sufficient criterion for policy formulation. (Keynesians, like their neoclassical economist critics tend to be favourably disposed towards assessing policy impact based on empirical evidence; Austrians on the fringe Right argue the economy is too complex to act as a testing ground)

Questions like "is better aggregate economic growth a justification for disproportionate tax increases for these people?" or "if the bottom percentile are hungry, should feeding them take precedence over growth objectives?" are inherently moral

"As a newer field, we not always know how to find the correct answers yet."

If I may say so, that is a rather refreshingly humble statement for an economist to make.

It is good to take care not to create a false dilemma.

Of course the government is not the only actor that can, or should, address moral problems.

As I understand libertarianism, they are not at all against solving issues of poverty or hunger. But they do believe that the government is not necessarily the best solution to every problem. Of course that statement should be obvious, as government tends to be less efficient and more watered down than other organizations. So the question is in the details.

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