Today’s lower classes are harmed far more by programs which tell them they will be supported regardless of the life decisions they make, than they would be if they were told they’d have to live with the consequences of bad decisions. If someone who would rather spend money on a 50″ television than on food complains of hunger, rewarding such complains with charity will simply encourage other people to get 50″ televisions, since their choices aren’t just “food and no television” or “television and no food”, but they can also get “television and food as well”.

If someone decides he’ll be happy spending half as much on food as some other people, if he can spend the balance toward getting a fancy television, that should be his right. If he is in fact satisfied with the reduced food budget, his decision may be a good one. If, however, he ends up being unacceptably hungry as a result, it is not a judgment call for others to say his decision should not be rewarded. Either he is genuinely unsatisfied with his food budget, in which case he would have been better off spending less on television and more on food, making his decision a bad one which should not be rewarded, or else he is exaggerating his hunger, which should also not be rewarded.

Society can only function when people have incentives to minimize their needs. Rewarding those who maximize their needs is a recipe for disaster.

And again, private charity is great as long as you’re the “right sort”. Social Darwinism, in other words. There should be no NEED for the *basics* to be covered by people spending their private time. This is what a state is FOR.

But back in reality, some of us actually want a system which allows people to thrive and fosters individualism. The closest thing to that which we have…is the Nordic Model.

The closest thing to yours? Somalia. Tribalism.

@69 – Sure, let the poor starve and you no longer have the poor. Congratulations, you’ve solved poverty!

@76 – The untouchables, the lower class, blacks, Jews… making things morally conditional has a storied history.

Really, Matt!? You’re surely joking, right?

Why would I be joking? You have presented zero evidence that there was mass starvation before the advent of government-based welfare programs.

Wrong. The programs (any program, really) merely need a minority who do want them and a majority who does not care. Welcome to the United States.

Sounds like private charity would work just fine then, right? A majority support is not needed for private charity to function.

We don’t have an a la carte tax system whereby you can choose which policies you want to be taxed over. There is no system that you can decide that your tax dollars are specifically to go to this but not to that. It simply doesn’t work like that.

For example, I …

This entire set of paragraphs seems to be making my argument for me. Yes, you can’t choose where your taxes go. You would like your money to go to those who need it and not to various warmongers/corporate welfare/etc. So why do you denigrate the system that would allow you to do this (voluntarism) and support the system that does the opposite of what you want (statism/collectivism)? This confuses me.

That’s the system we live in. Governments tax and spend. If you can’t accept that, then there is no point in discussing any particular policy of tax or spend. We’d have to begin by discussing why there is this newfangled concept called society and government.

Why are you trying to counter my normative statements with positive ones? Yes, governments tax and spend. They do a shitty job of it. This has nothing to do with whether or not governments should exist, something you haven’t tackled yet.

Unexpected charity or support can be beneficial to the recipient, but expectations of charity or undeserved support are highly toxic. It may not be possible to provide even emergency support for people without creating some expectation, and having some of that expectation create need which would not otherwise exist, but it’s imperative that the new need created be a small fraction of the support given.

If one measures efficiency as one minus the quantity of new need created per support dollar spent, aid will be 90% efficient if each dollar of support creates $0.10 of new need, 50% efficient if each support dollar creates $0.50 of new need, or 10% if each support dollar creates $0.90 of new need, etc. There may be room for judgment in deciding whether it is worthwhile to give support in a manner which is 50% efficient. On the other hand, if each dollar of support generates more than a dollar of new need, efficiency will go negative. It makes no sense to spend *any* money in a way which yields negative efficiency.

Who gets to decide who falls into the “denied welfare so as to serve as a warning to others” category? Would these decisions be made locally?

That’s what I alluded to when I said that it’s a state matter working through the particularly needy communities such as communities that were rocked by financial devastation beyond their reasonable control (ex being the big employer outsourcing their jobs). As a prudential consideration, welfare should be a policy that is used sparingly to target particular situations, not a blanket policy that is always there.

http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-cohn/101741/cbo-obamacare-cost-deficit-lie-double-price-fox

Who gets to decide who falls into the “denied welfare so as to serve as a warning to others” category? Would these decisions be made locally?

In other words, fuck ‘em. Just step over the bodies.

As a matter of public policy, yes. Once again: Liberty has consequences [if you choose to abuse it]. Let private charity choose to minister to them.

I have a better idea. How about preventing anybody who says a single perjorative word about “government handouts” and “entitlements” from claiming any form of government assistance, like subsidies, tax concessions etc?

How about we do the same to anyone who says a single pejorative word about police powers from claiming police protection while we’re at it? Oh wait…

OK, so then we need to make sure that a significant percentage of corporate leaders, politicians, showbiz people and other wealthy individuals should not be able to claim any government benefits. That’ll teach them…
Oh, wait a minute…
I have a better idea. How about preventing anybody who says a single perjorative word about “government handouts” and “entitlements” from claiming any form of government assistance, like subsidies, tax concessions etc?

Private charities are generally either 1. church based, 2. dedicated to people who are suffering from some specific medical ailment or 3. dedicated to a specific subset of aggrieved people, such as battered women, etc. I don’t know of too many secular private charities that just have a general fund to help random poor people out with their rent. So if you’re atheist and don’t fall into either of the other charities, you’d be truly fucked.

“As a society, we actually need the drunkards, drug addicts, the promiscuous, etc. to be denied welfare so as to serve as a warning to others of why those behaviors ought to be avoided by personal choice.”

In other words, fuck ‘em. Just step over the bodies.

“DI is disability insurance; incidentally, DI will go broke this decade so no need to worry about 2030 ratios.”

I should have caught that. Thanks for the correction.

Returning to the original topic:

Robert Reich has pointed out that in 1983, the SS cap was set so that 90% of household income was taxed. Now, it’s dropped to 84%. Raise the cap to 90% as it was in 1983 and the SS problem goes away for the foreseeable future.

In any event, Medicare is in much much worse shape and there don’t appear to be any relatively easy fixes for it.

As a society, we actually need the drunkards, drug addicts, the promiscuous, etc. to be denied welfare so as to serve as a warning to others of why those behaviors ought to be avoided by personal choice. If people see single mothers getting fatter checks as they have more babies, drug addicts getting top quality health care, etc. there are a lot of people who end up taking home the wrong message about personal choices. In a sociological sense, it’s like a market distortion of the same degree and similar kind as the bailouts of the financial sector.

Welfare ultimately comes down to a prudential consideration, something which most liberals fail to recognize because they refuse to acknowledge that the welfare state as it actually exists behaves at odds with their goals. Unlike most conservatives, I don’t believe the average liberal on the street likes welfare dependency, but merely refuses to acknowledge it as a byproduct because it calls into question their beliefs and accomplishments. The fact of the matter is that social welfare spending as we do it causes substantial risks of dependency and has a variety of destructive side effects including altering family dynamics.

As a prudential consideration, it might be reasonable for the state (not federal government) to intervene to help a community that got hit hard by an employer that left town. For example, the state could offer a certain amount of unemployment benefits, retraining at a public university or community college at public expense and provide tax incentives to banks to provide 0% interest loans to entrepreneurs in the affected community to either start new businesses or consolidate existing loans to reduce costs.

When the state pays for a bigger legal system, it gets more people in prison and on probation. When it pays for a much bigger military than it needs, it feels free to wage war. When the state provides welfare freely and reliably, it encourages many irresponsible people to not think before they act.

For the same reason that the majority of people over-withhold their income taxes so that they get a bigger refund in the spring. Because even if people know that they SHOULD save, they tend not to unless they set up a situation in which they do it involuntarily.

That’s a good point. As you stated, there’s a difference between someone who is down on his luck, and someone who is a drunk. So, is it moral, and necessary, to supply adequate welfare for the former but not the latter? That there is something immoral about taking from Peter, the stand-up guy, to give to Paul, the town drunk? It would be hard to argue against that.

However, (now that we’ve established that it is not immoral to take from Peter, the stand-up guy, to give to Paul, the temporarily-down-on-his-luck guy) we’ve gone beyond the principle that states that it is always immoral for governments to take from Peter to give to Paul, and have now moved on to it being a matter of degree.

Now we’re getting somewhere…

Cheers.

Really, Matt!? You’re surely joking, right?

In order for these programs to pass they will have to have the support of the majority of the population, right?

Wrong. The programs (any program, really) merely need a minority who do want them and a majority who does not care. Welcome to the United States.

If they are already OK with surrendering their income to the state why would they not voluntarily surrender their income to charity?

We don’t have an a la carte tax system whereby you can choose which policies you want to be taxed over. There is no system that you can decide that your tax dollars are specifically to go to this but not to that. It simply doesn’t work like that.
For example, I have no problem with my tax dollars going to support programs like food stamps. 20 years ago I was down on my luck and food stamps helped me out immeasurably. Today, I own my own business. (don’t worry, I’m not foolish enough to believe that this happens to everyone – and there is merit to the welfare “trap” argument… anyhoo…) I don’t, however, want my tax dollars to go to dropping bombs in hell hole X. But I don’t get to choose that. The best I can do is vote for the best representative that chooses to support the policies that I support.

That’s the system we live in. Governments tax and spend. If you can’t accept that, then there is no point in discussing any particular policy of tax or spend. We’d have to begin by discussing why there is this newfangled concept called society and government.

Cheers.

You don’t seriously believe that if there were no state welfare, then private charities would be adequate, do you? If you do, history would not be on your side.

That depends on how you define adequacy. From our perspective, private charity was always sufficiently adequate because we reject the idea that just because you’re suffering and have your hand out you should receive assistance. Unlike liberals, libertarians and conservatives believe that suffering is a natural consequence to choosing self-destructive or immoral ways of living which one is free to choose. Thus, we may readily agree with you that an out of work worker down on his luck needs a break, but from our perspective, there is nothing immoral about denying public assistance to drunkards, drug addicts, chain smokers, the morbidly obese, he promiscuous, etc.

Liberty has consequences.