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Comment by thaumasiotes | Hacker News Reader

> Health care is already free of charge in most of the modern world [...] why not extend that to food/water/shelter/tertiary education?

Because we don't want to support a permanent underclass of parasites? As you adjust the rules of society to favor having children and not working at the expense of those who work and delay their children, you'll find that the demographics of society adjust to the new rules.

Or, in the words of Kipling:

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all

By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;

But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,

And the gods of the copybook headings said: If you don't work you die.

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> Because we don't want to support a permanent underclass of parasites?

Of course we do! Compare the crime rates (or worthy index of your choice) between countries that actively try to provide these things to everyone versus those that don't.

> As you adjust the rules of society to favor having children and not working at the expense of those who work and delay their children, you'll find that the demographics of society adjust to the new rules.

Compare the birth rates between the countries that provide all of these things and those that don't.

For reference, Finland's birth rate is 1.80 per woman (and dropping), below the replacement rate of 2.1, and has been that way since 1969.

Your theories and sayings may have some credibility, but data and evidence trumps.

Just wait for the "but Finland is homogeneous" racist counterargument.

>Of course we do! Compare the crime rates (or worthy index of your choice) between countries that actively try to provide these things to everyone versus those that don't.

If you view it in terms of the negative economic effects of wealth transfer from productive citizens to those who don't work, invest or study, it doesn't matter if the "parasites" are stealing money directly or if the government is taking it for them. The end result is still a transfer of wealth from people who might use it to produce more wealth to people who'll only consume it.

For every act of production, there must be an equal and opposite act of consumption. Double entry accounting pretty much guarantees it. I don't see store shelves empty. I do see stores closing. I see negative effective interest rates on demand deposits and pitiful rates on CDs that are barely better than stuffing the money under a mattress.

Somehow, I fail to detect a massive shift towards underproduction. This website stands as testament to the difficulty in founding or expanding a business these days.

Trying to classify people into "productive" and "nonproductive" is very nearly impossible even within small groups who perform that same basic work in the same building.

The thing that makes your line of reasoning nearly impossible is that the economy is nowhere near a closed system. There is a rate of money printing which makes all the gummint largesse meaningless in the larger economy, and it does so without destroying the value of the currency.

As GDP growth ( remember that? Ah, the 1990s ) rises, the indebted funds decline in value relative to the rising economy. But if everybody sits on a box full of Benjamins as people do now, this doesn't happen. But people confuse low interest rates with "loose money" when it's not that at all.

>For every act of production, there must be an equal and opposite act of consumption.

The key thing is, the production and consumption need not occur simultaneously. Say I dig up a really spiky plant. I could immediately consume it. Or, I could use it to bludgeon an ox to death that I couldn't otherwise kill. The latter use is a form of investment: the plant is turned into a tool that increases my productivity, allowing me to obtain more food (the ox) than without it.

A similar decision applies in some way to everything that's produced. It can be consumed sooner, or it can be invested and consumed later, in a manner than increases overall ability to produce/consume.

Take a look at http://faculty.lebow.drexel.edu/lainczc/cal38/Growth/Levine_..., a metastudy that identifies "a positive, robust correlation between growth and the share of investment in GDP"; more investment leads to more growth.

>Trying to classify people into "productive" and "nonproductive" is very nearly impossible even within small groups who perform that same basic work in the same building.

By unproductive I was speaking of the stereotypical welfare-dependent individual to which the conversation I was replying to seemed to be referring. If somebody does not work or study, just sits around receiving money for doing nothing, most people would not consider that productive.

What you will find is that the lag between production and consumption works out as if it were a "constant" in the differential equations and is... dropped.

In general more investment means more growth, but sometimes investment isn't the bottleneck. I don't know how much you can generalize from the economy since 2007 but is looks like monetary velocity is just plain old down.

I don't believe in the stereotypical welfare bum. It does not square with what I have seen. YMMV. Tyler Cowan and others have been talking A Lot about "zero marginal product" workers. Given the length and depth of the recession, you wonder if this is the "new normal" and if it is, we'll have to adjust to it. But I am sure we had the same thoughts in '73. '81-82, '91, '01... still, each recession, some workers are permanently displaced.

"But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy"

Sorry, Rudyard, but the Helsinki shopping districts are pretty impressive.

It appeared to me that quite a few of the service workers in Helsinki are from the Philippines and West Africa. I don't know what kind of terms they are there on.

>Because we don't want to support a permanent underclass of parasites?

Yeah, just the permanent parasitic overlords.

>Or, in the words of Kipling:

Yeah, the poet laureate of the Imperial parasites roaching off the hard labor of billions working as they slaves in colonies like India and elsewhere...

> Because we don't want to support a permanent underclass of parasites?

Why do you think that would happen?

I covered that in the original comment, immediately after the part you quote.

>> As you adjust the rules of society to favor having children and not working at the expense of those who work and delay their children, you'll find that the demographics of society adjust to the new rules.

What's more, it's already happening right now, so a better question might be "why do you think making this lifestyle more attractive would make the problem worse"

You just supposed that to be true without really explaining WHY you think that's true.

> What's more, it's already happening right now

No it's not. The birth rate in the US has been steadily declining over the last century. Unemployment rates over the last 80 years oscillate around 6-7% pretty consistently.

So... why do you think that?

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