http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfares_effect_on_poverty
Other studies show, however, that it has diminishing returns, especially as it leads to poverty/ghetto culture. However this is changing with technology, internet and mobile phones. People are more docile than in the 90s with the gangsta rap craze.
As for "ghetto culture" - I am referring to the statistics on single mothers / teen mothers in urban ghetto neighborhoods, and the amount of violence, drug use and drug dealing and done by chronically unemployed males who are feeling disenfranchised and without a purpose. Note that poverty by itself is not the main factor - the same neighborhoods before welfare (50-60 years ago) which retained similar demographics in terms of race saw far leas of either one of these phenomena. The culture was certainly different, with a greater emphasis on productive labor, two parent households, and responsibility. And I say all this to show the diminishing returns from welfare, because the welfare class will be expanding to include more and more people as automation takes over.
But on a more positive note: http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violen...
> Well I could share statistics which clearly show a major rise in violent crime by urban youth in the 90s, with a major decline afterwards, and there could be several explanations for that.
Several easy to spot deterrents of youth crime implemented in the 90s:
- Zero Tolerance in schools (automatic expulsion if you have anything that even looks like a weapon)
- If you commit a violent crime as a juvenile these days you're likely to get tried and sentenced as an adult (specifics depending on state)
As for teen mothers, I can't contribute much to that discussion - but the CDC's data on 15-19 year olds shows a marked and consistent drop in birth rates from 1990 to 2010. [1]
> violence, drug use and drug dealing... done by chronically unemployed males who are feeling disenfranchised and without a purpose.
Although not socially accepted, it is often treated as a job; I'd also advise caution in trying to limit drug use and dealing to specific demographics.
On the topic of welfare, you'd probably be surprised how many college students make use of food stamps these days.
1. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6118a8.htm?s_cid=...
As far as teen mothers -- yes, overall it's been a drop, but that just underscores the disconnect with what's happening with poor urban youth:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2871086/
"Teen pregnancy rates in New York City (NYC) are consistently higher than in the United States (US) overall, particularly among blacks and Hispanics and within poor neighborhoods."
I think the teen pregnancy phenomenon is part of a larger phenomenon of people having children out of wedlock, and then the mothers raising them as single parents. When it's the norm to have the state provide funds to help raise the children, it creates a moral hazard and affects the culture in communities which are highly dependent on welfare.
As far as actual drug use and drug dealing, I'm not knowledgeable enough to get into details, except to note that the War on Drugs seems to have produced some pretty sad results. 20% of the inmates are in prison for recreational drug related offenses, and the amount of youths from poor neighborhoods is alarmingly high. I would say that this War on Drugs has, among other things, been affected by the negative side effects of the welfare state and minimum wage laws. I agree with Thomas Sowell that minimum wage has held many back who would otherwise have found employment somewhere. However if you're going to abolish minimum wage, you should definitely offer the unconditional safety net in the article.
Welfare is a complicated issue, the most I have been able to understand overall is that it definitely lowers poverty, but its long-term effect on culture in poor communities has been to create a culture of dependence, disenfranchisement, and out-of-wedlock parenthood. The last one seems to perpetuate the first two. This may rapidly change with the internet disrupting education and other sectors, and I hope it does.
I lean more left/progressive but I have to agree that this is unsettling: http://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/2010/pdf/wm2934_bythenumbe...
And what's most unsettling is that the welfare state in the USA will have to expand as jobs are eliminated.
I agree with a lot of what you say here, but I really have no authority to comment on long term effects of welfare or the state of huge cities like NYC (as well as the East Coast in general).
Thanks for a well-reasoned reply!
Better yet, get laid off and want to try making iOS apps? Just do it, your benefits are unaffected if you want to start a company.
Now, the downside is currently upper middle class people get higher disability benefits/social security payments. With BI that goes away, society does not care how old you are or what you made you get the same basic income as everyone else. So you better have savings if you want keep living in a high cost of living area.
Here's a question: how much are they doing right now? My guess: not much. Given the high rate of unemployment that exists already, it seems like society's value for unskilled work is pretty low already. So I don't think the bulk loss to society in having the least ambitious ~10-20% slack off is that bad, especially if a large number of people are more engaged in their work.
Parasites at the bottom of society are pretty harmless. Parasites at the top, on the other hand, are extremely damaging. We have a lot of the second kind. Because people have to work and most need a steady income that just barely meets expenses, that pretty much means they end up in a subordinate role, there's a class of useless people called "executives" who have total control over the economy (and mediocritize it, because it's best for their positional stability to do so) because people are terrified of losing the jobs and incomes.
If there's a trade-off between having more parasites at the bottom of society who don't work vs. having more parasites at the top who ruin others' work, I'd take the former, hands down.
Nonono, you have it backwards. We NEED more parasites! The supply of labor exceeds demand right now which sends the price to 0 (minimum wage paints the problem a different color but doesn't fix anything). We need to decrease the supply of labor so that the market can start pricing it rationally again.
If everybody stops working, the price of services skyrockets. But the problem (soaring cost of services) and the solution (soaring reward for labor) are one and the same. This is how the free market is supposed to work. In fact, I'd go so far to say that BI presents a closer approximation to a free market than the system we have now (where the government price-controls labor).
I don't consider it abstractly good for someone to live on society, while able to work, and not working. However, the cost of that is pennies compared to what we pay by having terrible leadership (parasites at the top).
That's not quite how prices work. There is always a demand for labor. If the price of labor fell low enough there would be plenty of jobs. Though no one would want to work at those wages, it's even illegal to do so. The point is just that the price will never really fall to zero, even if it gets low.
>If everybody stops working, the price of services skyrockets. But the problem (soaring cost of services) and the solution (soaring reward for labor) are one and the same. This is how the free market is supposed to work. In fact, I'd go so far to say that BI presents a closer approximation to a free market than the system we have now (where the government price-controls labor).
That's not the intention of guaranteed minimum income at all, and not a good thing either. You are just cutting off one place (higher prices) to feed the other (higher wages). At least if I understand what you mean correctly, which I'm not sure. But the idea of the system is that it will balance out wealth disparities over time, but not too unfairly on people who do succeed. As well as provide a safety net. And get rid of all the bad incentives and complications created by other systems which attempt to do the same.
We need to fix the market in a new way, so that the market can be free? What the what?!
A free market is one where price accurately reflects the mix of supply and demand.
A free market is NOT and NEVER one where supply and demand are manipulated to produce a "better" result.
You are arguing supply side good, demand side bad but consider zooming out and asking first if manipulation of either variable will really produce a predictable, desirable result.
I've heard lot of arguments that say "but this is GOOD market manipulation" but it always ends in tears.
Supply and demand will always win out in the end. The market is faster, smarter and stronger than you.
The winners are the ones that can ride the waves, see what the result of manipulation this way to that will be, and position themselves accordingly. Increasing the ability of the participants in the system to react in these ways makes the system more rational, and in turn more stable.
Juicing one variable or the other makes people build knowledge/lives/decisions on a pseudo foundation that will eventually be undercut by market forces. It teaches people the wrong things and makes the system less rational and therefore more bubble prone.
Aside: there's a difference between "guaranteed minimum income" and "basic income", at least as I've seen them discussed here on HN. As I understand it, an $X guaranteed minimum income encourages laziness because the first $X worth of one's labor is essentially wasted. Basic income, on the other hand, is added to whatever a person earns from labor, so there's no disincentive to work.
Yes, I was being sloppy with terminology. The price wouldn't fall exactly to zero and minimum wage appears to stop it well above 0 but unemployment makes up the difference. This is quibbling and distracts from the analysis.
> hat's not the intention of guaranteed minimum income at all, and not a good thing either. You are just cutting off one place (higher prices) to feed the other (higher wages). At least if I understand what you mean correctly, which I'm not sure.
I don't know what you mean by "cutting off one place." If you mean that the prices of some services would go up in this picture, you're exactly right, but that's the point -- the prices would better reflect the desirability of the labor required to produce the good. The flip side of that is that undesirable labor gets payed better under the BI system and then there is the BI itself. What good are low prices if wages are even lower?
The price of labor has not decreased since 2001 (the beginning of the data series). Wages have not decreased either.
For some reason, I can't seem to explain this concept to many people. We currently have a large population of people who want to work but do not have work. If systems like BI make some of those people (or people who do have jobs) not want to work, that is not a problem; because we would still have more people who want to work than we need.
Systems like BI literally give us a sliding scale to control the incentive to work.
We indeed have a parasitic class, for a large degree consisting of immigrants who don't share our culture and consider depending on BI 'awesome' rather than shameful as Dutch people do.
The effects of our version of BI aren't actually that pronounced, and the main thing is actually a feeling of comfort, safety and an increased willingness to cooperate (as opposed to compete.)
Now a single piece of data from a single country doesn't imply anything, but according to the OECD we work the least yet are the most productive country (per capita, not working hour.) Intuitively and emotionally I would attribute that to our BI / socialist state.
Citation needed. The amount of racism people seem to allow themselves recently makes it feel like we've dragged society back 100 years.
When Americans complain about "immigrants", they sure as shit don't mean Gunther from Germany, they mean Juan from Mexico or Chang from Korea. Europe is not immune from this - France as a whole seems much more staunchly racist (or rather, accepting of casual racism) than the USA.
Racism has many faces, especially today where it's now taboo. There are all kinds of ways that racism manifests in modern, developed society without someone screaming "he's black! get him!".
As I'm excluding the people inside that group who wish to work but can't find a job from my definition of a 'parasitic' class; that leaves just the group of immigrants that do intentionally live off of our welfare system.
On a higher level, I actually still believe that this is a net-positive since I'm convinced that if you leave these people on benefits after a while they'll start getting bored and/or being self-directed.
My main concern lies with public antipathy against this (relatively small) subclass growing to levels where it endangers the Dutch welfare system itself, as evidenced by the rise of politicians like Geert Wilders.
[1] http://www.cbs.nl/nl-NL/menu/themas/dossiers/allochtonen/pub...
[2] http://mens-en-samenleving.infonu.nl/sociaal/63170-ongelijkh...
That's not really the citation needed part.
The citation needed part is:
> "who don't share our culture and consider depending on BI 'awesome' rather than shameful as Dutch people do"
This is the part that rtpg cites as being racist. You've gone from observing a fact to speculating on its causes, and the answer you've arrived at is "because they're lazier" - which as an argument is hundreds of years old and has been used against a laundry list of races. It was a key part of Social Darwinism, and one of the justifications for eugenics.
The Italians, the Irish, the Chinese, blacks in the US, etc etc, have all been subject to this argument in the past. The list goes on, and considering how common this argument is, and how frequently it has been debunked, the bar for evidence is high for many of us to be convinced.
Side note: it's frequently shocking to me how racist Europe can be to non-Europeans. And here I thought the USA had a bad case of racism - but the diversity seems to at least make people a little more aware, and the country's ugly history with it also sweeps a few common, easy-to-debunk arguments off the board. Around here the "oh, they're just lazier" argument would never go unchallenged if uttered in public, but yours is not the first time I've heard a European utter the notion as if it's the most natural conclusion in the world.
Perhaps you remember our little debate about Somalis in Finland? Do you remember losing it?
You still don't get it. Europe has no problem with immigrants who come here and support themselves and adapt to our societies, but Europe does very much have a problem with Muslim immigrants.
They come here because they know they can just waltz in and start living on welfare. But they don't want to adapt to their host countries. Instead, they want the West to adapt to them. Here's a bunch of Muslims in Sweden, being shown a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHsTIDekFGM .. Can you guess why it started with police officers present in the room? -Why that's precisely because the organizers knew the video would make Muslims go apeshit.
And go apeshit they did. Right away. Listen to them frantically shouting "allahu akbar" and think about what's going on. What's going through their minds? Is this kind of behaviour suitable for a civilized society? What would your reaction to that video have been? Do you think it warranted raging and attacking people?
This is not about racism. It's about facing reality and seeing it for what it is, even despite our governments' efforts to hide it. Again, we have no problem with immigrants who support themselves and behave in a civilized way. It's just that we have way too many who don't.
The video also seems like a carefully crafted media stunt designed to make a point.
white_devil on the other hand seems like he'd be more comfortable on Stormfront than HN.
Yeah, I know. You're a bit confused. Originally you wanted to call him a racist, but then he changed his tone to be politically correct enough to make such accusations look foolish, even in the eyes of other hypersensitive sheeple.
You need to come to terms with reality. For example, the implications of a room full of Muslims going apeshit over a video should be clear to anyone, even if they reflect negatively on a group of people.
You may not approve of "generalizing about religion", but they did, in fact, go apeshit exactly as predicted (through a filthy generalization, no less).
> and I don't agree with the points you're trying to make.
Then perhaps you think going apeshit over a video and attacking people is suitable behaviour for a civilized society? Or perhaps your reaction would have been the same?
> The video also seems like a carefully crafted media stunt designed to make a point.
That's right. The point they successfully made was: "These people are not fit for a civilized society.".
I think you're both taking my initial comment which meant to refer to a specific subset of immigrants and interpreting it as if I meant to apply it to all immigrants.
> Yours is not the first time I've heard a European utter the notion as if it's the most natural conclusion in the world.
We indeed consider it self evident that a welfare system like ours is fragile and prone to abuse by people who intend not to contribute. That's just about acknowledging that lazy people exist everywhere and that to maintain stability of our system we need to make sure not to disproportionately attract them.
My original comment also referred to a recent public policy issue relating to a specific immigration policy (family reunion) being abused to bring large groups of people into the country who were not looking for jobs, not learning Dutch and forming insular foreign communities that structurally lived off of the welfare system.
We're talking about only a couple hundred or thousand people at most and as stated I actually believed even that was still a net-positive overall, but that is the only thing I would truly classify a parasitic class.
P.S. There is indeed plenty of racism to go around in Europe as well. Racists, like lazy people, are everywhere.
That's because in the US we have BI of about $20k/year [1]. They don't need to work, so they don't.
In India and other locales with minimal/negligable BI, they do domestic labor and other such tasks (at least in urban areas, rural locales are another game entirely).
There is no good reason any software engineer or other high skill individual should do laundry or clean their own house. It's a complete waste of their time. It's merely the perverse incentives created by our BI system (and other labor market rigidities) that cause this to happen.
[1] No matter how low a person's earned income is, their consumption is about $20k. ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/ce/standard/2009/income.txt