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A question. (For those on the right.)

Deacon923 said:
The studies were designed to isolate the stress of being poor. One study tested the IQ of farmers in India immediately before they sold their harvest (when they were most strapped for cash) and immediately after (when they were flush). The same individuals performed markedly better when flush than when strapped. That's pretty compelling evidence that it's the stress of poverty rather than something inherent in the individual. Here's a summary article, you can follow links from there.

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2013/08/how-poverty-taxes-brain/6716/
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It seems plausible that people distracted by a financial decision would do worse on an IQ test than people not distracted by financial decisions. Should we give this young lady some more cash to alleviate some of her financial stress? Would that maybe help her get off welfare? So far, she's is still stuck on the government cakewalk.

 
I've asked you once to provide the source of that video and you did not. I'm asking again. I strongly suspect it is bullshit.

Even if it is 100% legit, using extreme outliers to try and make an argument about wide swathes of people and programs is about the laziest form of debate I know, and I'm not going to dignify it with a further response.
 
Deacon923 said:
I've asked you once to provide the source of that video and you did not. I'm asking again. I strongly suspect it is bullshit.

Even if it is 100% legit, using extreme outliers to try and make an argument about wide swathes of people and programs is about the laziest form of debate I know, and I'm not going to dignify it with a further response.
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I got it off youtube search--I think I put in "welfare queen". I am sure it came from some right wing website trying to show how good welfare recipients have it, but I do think the numbers she quotes are correct. They seem to correlate with the ones from the CATO study you gave us. This is not an outlier, it is what a single mother in CA with 4 children can expect to get from welfare. I would not worry too much about the source of this video if you agree that she is getting what she says.

If you do agree, I am asking whether more cash will help. I don't think it will. I think she is stuck on welfare for the forseeable future and that she is unlikely to develop any marketable job skills while she is on welfare.
 
Its an outlier because it represents a very small % of welfare dollars and is an extreme case of abuse, if true. The program will never be 100% abuse -free - just like the military, corporate welfare, farm subsidies, etc - so it is an outlier. You are holding it up as some kind of smoking gun to kill the whole program or prove the whole program is a failure, and it is a weak argument. Your "hardcore libertarianism" is unrealistic and pulls the argument so far out of whack we end up debating these extremes and reality is lost. Just like the current discourse on television, radio, and political blogosphere. The notion that government must be eliminated has run amok, and people like Wrangor who are fairly new to political discussion think it is the norm. It's not, it is extremism.
 
The studies I have seen all say that attitudes toward education coordinate very strongly with social class with less priority in poorer groups. Those attitudes then translate to the child's attitudes toward his or her ability to be successful in the educational environment.
 
DeaconCav06 said:
The studies I have seen all say that attitudes toward education coordinate very strongly with social class with less priority in poorer groups. Those attitudes then translate to the child's attitudes toward his or her ability to be successful in the educational environment.
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this
 
DreamOnDemOn said:
I got it off youtube search--I think I put in "welfare queen". I am sure it came from some right wing website trying to show how good welfare recipients have it, but I do think the numbers she quotes are correct. They seem to correlate with the ones from the CATO study you gave us. This is not an outlier, it is what a single mother in CA with 4 children can expect to get from welfare. I would not worry too much about the source of this video if you agree that she is getting what she says.

If you do agree, I am asking whether more cash will help. I don't think it will. I think she is stuck on welfare for the forseeable future and that she is unlikely to develop any marketable job skills while she is on welfare.
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Fine. There is no program you can invent that will not be gamed by some people, and a small minority of people are not interested in improving themselves (or to look at it in a less prejudicial way, are not motivated by more material success). Who cares? Those people are not representative of the vast majority of recipients of aid, and it is impossible to design a program that will weed out the "virtuous poor" from the "lazy poor". People have been trying for centuries and it cannot be done. The only way to even get close would be to create an even more invasive government bureaucracy to supervise the citizenry and decide whether they are deserving of aid - the JHMD proposal, I believe.

The basic objection to any welfare program is that lazy people will take advantage of it. So what? The lazy people are going to take advantage of whatever you do, and doing nothing is not an option because Americans reject sentencing the poor to live in mass homeless camps with starving kids. If the government does nothing, the lazy will take advantage of private charity, too, and private charity does not have nearly the scale to meet the need and never will, libertarian fantasy notwithstanding. There is huge expense and effort in having a paternalistic government weeding out the "lazy poor".

The way out of the trap is to move toward a much simpler system of poor relief, like some kind of UBI. It hugely reduces government bureaucracy and cost. It simplifies the whole system and makes it more predictable, which reduces the stress associated with poverty and helps people make better decisions. You can make part of it conditional cash transfers to make people vaccinate their kids and keep them in school. It gives entrepreneurial types a base in that they can choose to live 20 to a house and save their UBI money to fund their business. It gives artistic types an opportunity to create social capital for the rest of us. It gives all the rest of us working schlubs something to fall back on when we lose our jobs or become disabled or get old. The amounts would not allow anyone to live in luxury (i.e., they should be set at approximately the tax-impacted equivalent of a minimum wage standard of living), and history and human nature have established that the vast majority of people do desire to have the dignity of a job and rise above a basic standard of living. Again, 3% unemployment in the late 90s, and much higher workforce participation rates then vs. now. The welfare system was no less generous then than now, but the overwhelming majority chose to be employed instead of on welfare when jobs were available.


It's like the war on drugs in some ways. No matter how hard you try, you will never, ever get 100% compliance with drug laws and completely shut off the supply. The effort and intrusiveness of trying is much more expensive and destructive than just letting people be people and treating the minority who get addicted.

So that's the rant on UBI. I am about out of rant for today.
 
WakeandBake said:
Its an outlier because it represents a very small % of welfare dollars and is an extreme case of abuse, if true. The program will never be 100% abuse -free - just like the military, corporate welfare, farm subsidies, etc - so it is an outlier. You are holding it up as some kind of smoking gun to kill the whole program or prove the whole program is a failure, and it is a weak argument. Your "hardcore libertarianism" is unrealistic and pulls the argument so far out of whack we end up debating these extremes and reality is lost. Just like the current discourse on television, radio, and political blogosphere. The notion that government must be eliminated has run amok, and people like Wrangor who are fairly new to political discussion think it is the norm. It's not, it is extremism.
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The discussion about this woman started because 923 brought up the fact that the government spends $20,610 per person on welfare. This woman I estimated recieves less than $10,000 per person. If she is an "outlier" please explain to me where all that money goes? Do some peole only get $1000 per person when the government is taking $20,610 from somebody for every person on welfare? I chose this particular woman because I thought she actually recieved a Higher percentage of the loot than is usual.
 
DreamOnDemOn said:
The discussion about this woman started because 923 brought up the fact that the government spends $20,610 per person on welfare. This woman I estimated recieves less than $10,000 per person. If she is an "outlier" please explain to me where all that money goes? Do some peole only get $1000 per person when the government is taking $20,610 from somebody for every person on welfare? I chose this particular woman because I thought she actually recieved a Higher percentage of the loot than is usual.
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Exactly. There is a large delta between the amount spent on poor relief, and the amount actually received by the poor. The delta is absorbed by bureaucracy that exists, basically, to try and weed out the "lazy poor" from the "virtuous poor".
 
good post, 923.

I suspect DoDo and jhmd are less interested in helping the poor than they are pissed off that they are "forced" by the government to do so, despite jhmd's clever little twist about pulling aid being the highest form of 'caring.' So reducing abuse down to what you and I would consider acceptable levels and on par with other programs, it remains unacceptable to them for its nature not its effectiveness.
 
Deacon923 said:
Exactly. There is a large delta between the amount spent on poor relief, and the amount actually received by the poor. The delta is absorbed by bureaucracy that exists, basically, to try and weed out the "lazy poor" from the "virtuous poor".
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Then would you argue for stopping the senseless war on poverty and give everybody who is in poverty today $10,000 per person, thus saving the taxpayer about half?
 
DeaconCav06 said:
The studies I have seen all say that attitudes toward education coordinate very strongly with social class with less priority in poorer groups. Those attitudes then translate to the child's attitudes toward his or her ability to be successful in the educational environment.
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link?
 
I'd be curious to see some good data on it as well. My wife teaches at an 80% free and reduced lunch school and sees both extremes. A lot of parents who realize their lives could have turned out better if they had focused more on education and quite a few that really don't seem to GAF about their kid's education.
 
WakeandBake said:
good post, 923.

I suspect DoDo and jhmd are less interested in helping the poor than they are pissed off that they are "forced" by the government to do so, despite jhmd's clever little twist about pulling aid being the highest form of 'caring.' So reducing abuse down to what you and I would consider acceptable levels and on par with other programs, it remains unacceptable to them for its nature not its effectiveness.
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It is true that I don't like being forced to do things. But the war on poverty has not worked. Of the $15 trillion spent on this in the last 50 years, $7.5 trillion has been completely wasted, not to mention how much the recipients have wasted. What could people have done with an extra $150 billion/year left in their pockets? We will never know whose children might have done better, who might have cured what disease, what new technologies might already have been developed. But we would been much better off.
 
I guess the characterization I take issue with is "attitude." I'm sure there are many examples of families that don't have the means or resources to properly prioritize education. Attitude toward education, though, seems cartoonish to me.
 
DreamOnDemOn said:
It is true that I don't like being forced to do things. But the war on poverty has not worked. Of the $15 trillion spent on this in the last 50 years, $7.5 trillion has been completely wasted, not to mention how much the recipients have wasted. What could people have done with an extra $150 billion/year left in their pockets? We will never know whose children might have done better, who might have cured what disease, what new technologies might already have been developed. But we would been much better off.
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Better yet, imagine if those people had just been employed with good wages, and the 1% at the top over that period of time were a little less rich? Imagine what those kids could have achieve, invented, etc. You have accepted that capitalism - and maybe a raw unbridled form you wish for - will always produce poor people. So in a sense, it has failed to wipe out poverty, too. You accept that out of hand, because it lines up with your beliefs, etc. But your sphincter is taut over this 'failure' that is perpetuated by the very headwind your beliefs force upon the poor.
 
Agree it's hard to separate attitude from resources. Anecdotally there are some examples of clear attitude issues though they may be more outlier examples.
 
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