Sure, after decades of being sabotaged by conservatives in Congress. If you spend all your time cutting holes in the social safety net, you can’t really point to the people falling through them as evidence that welfare doesn’t work.
Is this one of those things where your personal definition of “libertarianism” is controlling, and everyone else’s definition is incorrect? Dogmatism is very nearly libertarianism’s defining attribute. If this doesn’t describe you personally, that’s fantastic, but I’m going to need more than your personal say-so that you represent libertarianism as a whole.
What “different things” have libertarians proposed, here? The only alternative you’ve offered is straight out of the 19th century.
Also, you seem to be implying that welfare exists at the expense of private charity. Am I reading you wrong there? Because I’m fine with trying multiple different approaches to a problem. A strong, well-funded government safety net, supported by a large number of private charities. Which is what we have now, minus the “strong, well-funded” part. You’ve argued that we shouldn’t have even the tattered, thread-bare net we have now, but you haven’t said what would replace it - you want to take out what little government support we give to the poor and needy, and just hope real hard that private charity will suddenly expand to fill the gap.
Yeah, thanks for the grade school definition of “democracy.” That was very helpful.
Yes. And if you were a Democrat, we would both agree that fully funded welfare programs would be the best way to solve these problems. And if we were both leprechauns, we could just use our fairy gold to make the problem vanish entirely.
I’m not sure what point you think you’re making here.
What do you mean, “we?” I’m not on welfare, or taking charity. I’m assuming you don’t, either. So, shouldn’t the proper pronoun there be “they,” given that it’s not our lives that are at stake here?
At least when my ideas don’t work, I don’t automatically blame “the conservatives”. Over the period of its existence, there have been numerous times when “the liberals” have been in control of Congress. Somehow, they haven’t managed to fix it either.
For the record, I don’t spend any of my time cutting holes in the safety net. Whatever that means.
I’m trying to tell you that libertarianism is not about “one controlling vision” but “multiple co-existing visions”, and you’re trying to get me to tell you which of those multiple co-existing visions is the real one. I’m trying to figure out how we libertarians can have all these different notions and be defined by our dogmatism at the same time.
For record, dogmatism is not synonymous with libertarian thought. However, the history of this forum gives evidence that it is nearly synonymous with political debate. You’re putting on a fine show of it yourself.
If you would tone the seething down a little, you may find an opportunity to think about the discussion beyond grasping for your next canned counter-argument.
If it helps, I can assure you that the small group of libertarians in this country are no meaningful threat to your safety net.
I’m pretty sure that I stated that I don’t have the perfect solution to the problem, and neither do you. I thought it was an important point. An incidental corollary would be that, if I say I have no perfect solution to offer you, then you can’t really critique it.
If by “reading wrong” you mean “imaging words that weren’t actually on the screen”, then yes. If were going to construct something like this, it would be phrased more like “welfare exists at the expense of economic growth and personal dignity.” I don’t spend a lot time wringing my hands over the fate of private charity.
As long as everyone is forced to contribute to your personal fave…
Socialism doesn’t work. As nice as it sounds in concept, it just doesn’t.
That being said, this is probably an area where I diverge somewhat from my libertarian brethren, particularly the political ones. The welfare system is there, a lot of people have grown dependent on it, and we’ve all gotten out of the habit of feeling responsible for making the world better (because, that’s the government’s job). So, I would personally not be in favor of ripping the thing out and cackling over the resultant suffering and chaos. But I definitely favor trying to find ways to shrink it, not make it bigger and stronger.
However, fundamental to this, is we’ve got to start changing the attitude in this country about responsibility. We’ve gotten to a place where we think that any time we see something bad, that we should expect the government to fix it. The idea has become so entrenched, you simply can’t imagine thinking about it another way. We need to be thinking that the responsibility falls to us, individually, to solve the problems that we see.
Until we do that, your solution / my solution–doesn’t really matter. Nothing’s going to work.
And THAT is the biggest problem that I personally have with socialism: It encourages this attitude. I don’t have to DO anything. I pay my taxes; the government is supposed to fix the world for me.
And thank YOU for the grade-school effort at understanding what I’m saying.
I’ll try again. A democratic solution is one where we vote and pick “one best solution” for everyone. A libertarian solution is that we’re all free to pursue our personal favorites, and the cream will rise to the top.
So, for instance, if we all went to the burger joint, and ordered democratically, then we’d all end up eating the same thing–determined by the vote. If we ordered, um, libertarian-ally, then we would each order what we individually wanted, and different people would end up eating different things.
Does this solve every problem? Probly not, but because I think people are shockingly resourceful, things tend to get better over time.
Does it work for every case? Nope. Neither does democracy.
And if we were both libertarians, we wouldn’t assume that our agreed-upon answer was so perfectly right that we should immediately force it upon every other citizen of the country.
Well, first of all, history suggests that if “we” blithely let the poor suffer, “they” won’t just quietly accept their fate. The fact that “we” don’t mind walking on other people’s faces doesn’t not mean that we’ll get away with it. Keep in mind, I’m a libertarian, so I generally don’t imagine other people to be as helpless as you do.
More to the point of your grammatical concern, I think you may be a little to attached to the present moment. The fact that you have no need of external financial support RIGHT NOW does not necessarily mean that you won’t tomorrow. Shit happens.
I say “we” in recognition of the fact that the Solvent and the Poor are groups whose membership is ever-changing, and I may be in one group today and the other tomorrow. If this conversation has any meaning it all, it’s because we’re not talking about “us” and “them”. We’re talking about us.
I’m trying to figure out if “libertarian” has an actual definition at all. Does the term actually mean anything? When you describe yourself as a libertarian, what is information am I supposed to get out of it? If no two libertarians agree on what “libertarian” means, what purpose does the term even serve?
And libertarians can be both fractious, in that they don’t agree with each other what their own political philosophy actually means, while also being dogmatic in applying their version of libertarianism to every problem, regardless of how suited it is to the issue.
My arguments are not canned. They’re free range, and locally sourced, with no preservatives and raised without growth hormones.
I’m not asking for a perfect solution, I’m asking for any solution. Private charity isn’t it, because we’ve always had that, and it’s never been equal to the problem. The US pretty consistently leads industrialized nations in two categories: rates of charitable giving, and number of people living in the streets. If we get rid of, or even just shrink, welfare, that second number is only going to go up. Just like it does every single time we cut welfare benefits.
It works reasonably well in a number of areas, and would work better if it weren’t constantly sabotaged by ideologues. As opposed to libertarianism, which has never been shown to work anywhere, under any circumstances.
And that’s the dogmatism I was talking about - the focus on one issue as the solution to all problems. The problems we have today with poverty, homelessness, drug abuse, and so forth aren’t because we’re insufficiently individualized. They’re multifaceted problems with deep and diverse roots in our society. Welfare can solve a few of those problems. For the rest, at least it keeps people alive while we figure out how to address the underlying problems.
How does the welfare system prevent people from also pursuing their personal favorites? You keep trying to set this up as an either-or. We can either have welfare, or we can have private efforts. And yet, in the real world, we have both, and have for as long as we’ve had a welfare system.
I agree with that completely. So… if I’m at risk of needing external financial support, why would I want to reduce the amount of financial support that would, theoretically, be available to me?
Careful! You’re starting to talk like a socialist!
Solution: a negative income tax. It assures all people of having the basic means to pursue their individual aspirations and find fulfillment, without unduly incentivizing abstention from working, and thus overburdening the system. It doesn’t offend dignity - no begging for charity or dancing through dozens of bureaucratic hoops of different programs with different requirements. No punitive, paternalistic junk like Kansas’ list of verboten purchases with welfare money.
Okay, the idea of a negative income tax isn’t bad. But I’m not seeing how it addresses any of your issues with welfare:
It still needs to be funded. Where does that money come from? Taxes? Then you still have everyone in the country being forced to contribute to a solution, same as with welfare.
Who determines who qualifies for it? Sounds like you need a bureaucracy there. How do you keep it from expanding to the same size as our current welfare bureaucracy?
Since all you’re doing is swapping out a cash payment in exchange for services, I don’t see how it resolves the self-reliance “problem.” Either way, it’s people depending on the government for a hand-out.
I suppose the fact that you’re giving people cash does make it harder to attach some kinds of punitive, paternalistic junk to the program, like what’s going on in Kansas, but it doesn’t avoid other paternalistic junk, like mandatory drug testing before you can get your check. Still, I can see how this would make crap like that harder, so that’s one point in favor of your idea.
I’m not sure how this program doesn’t disincentivize unemployment as much (if not more) than welfare. Unless you have to be drawing some sort of a paycheck in order to qualify? Okay, but what about people who are too sick, or crazy, or fucked up on drugs, or simply too lazy to hold down a job? I agree that drug abuse and laziness are personal flaws that people should take responsibility for, but I can’t agree that refusing to take personal responsibility means you deserve to starve.
It’s a fair point. However, I think it’s also fair to say that relying on strangers in a debate forum for your understanding of libertarianism isn’t a very good strategy. If it helps, I read the first few paragraphs of the Wikipedia entry on the subject, and they’re not bad. Here’s a sample, with the best bits in bold:
So, it’s not that I’m being cagey; the answer to your question is tricky. I might even say it’s multifaceted and has deep and diverse roots in our society. And for reasons that I don’t really understand, in the last few years, libertarian principles have been a powerful magnet for crazy people who carry them to ridiculous places and make a great deal of confusing noise. I feel a little like I should apologize for that, but really, I’d send 'em somewhere else if I could.
Look I’m not going to try to debate whether Libertarians are dogmatic at all. But if you’re going to suggest that it is the key identifying feature of libertarianism, you’re going to have to convince me that libertarians are more dogmatic than, say, conservatives or liberals. Your tone suggests that anyone with the nerve to disagree with you is “dogmatic”.
It’s a natural response, and I get it, just from the other side: I’m right, and you’re stubborn.
Yeah, I’m just not very enthusiastic about leaping into this particular snake pit. The fact is that NOTHING has ever been “equal to the problem”, including social welfare. So, any ideas that I have will be easy pickings for you to shoot down, because they won’t be “equal to the problem” either. And I’m not willing to concede that the fact that I don’t have the solution to economic hardship means that libertarianism sucks. Similarly, I’m not willing to concede that the fact that we don’t have a unified field theory means that quantum mechanics sucks.
As much as it is anything, libertarianism is an *approach * to problem solving–it’s not a defined set of solutions.
To be fair, most of the people living on the streets aren’t there because they’re poor. They’re there because they’re crazy. Even most libertarians would agree that dumping most of the residents of mental hospitals into the street was a stupid idea.
Which is not to say that there is no problem; rather, the problem is different than the one you are talking about. Which is why expanding social welfare won’t reduce the number of people living in boxes, because, well, they’ll still be crazy.
I’m afraid I really need some convincing on this, even after recognizing that “works reasonably well in a number of areas” is a hardly a ringing endorsement.
I’d like an example or two of what you mean. Right now, I’m imagining Rush Limbaugh throwing wooden shoes at employees of the SSA. Amusing, but likely not what you’re trying to convey in such lyrical terms.
Not sure what YOU think of as libertarianism, but this simply is not true. One of our tropes is the efficiency of a free market. Pretty much every time you go shopping for something, find what you’re looking for, and buy it for a price that is acceptable to you, it’s one more instance of libertarian ideas working beautifully. Most liberals, these days, tend to acknowledge the efficiency of free markets (as opposed to saying that “libertarianism doesn’t work”), but then go on to say that there are fundamental flaws that keep them from working in certain cases, with poverty being one of them. If you, however, are unwilling to concede any ground, this conversation really can’t go far past, “I’m stupid? Well, you’re REALLY stupid. And annoying.”
Your organic, free-range ideas are starting to sound an awful lot like the final speech in The American President. And the logical leaps you are making are a little breathtaking. The temptation to give up on the conversation is quite strong, but I’ll make a few notes:
The “focus on one issue” straw man. The belief that maximizing individual liberty leads to the best outcomes is not focusing on one issue, any more than believing that the Scientific Method is the best way to understand the universe is. And YOU are the one that seems to believe that welfare is the solution to all problems.
“aren’t because we’re insufficiently individualized”. Look, when I say that we should strive for maximum individual liberty and you rephrase it as “we’re insufficiently individualized”, you’re just being obnoxious.
“multifacteted…deep and diverse roots”. So, you’re suggesting that these problems are really complicated, and I clearly don’t even understand them. Obnoxious.
“Welfare can solve a few of those problems.” Seems to me that if it could, it would have by now. I have a colleague who’s been seeing a chiropractor for several years, and I keep saying, “If he was really helping you, wouldn’t you be better by now?”
“at least it keeps people alive…”. I don’t know what you’re talking about. People still die every day in every part of the world. Conversely, maybe you can point to a case where one of these “ideological sabotage” events led to an big unexpected die-off of needy people.
You can’t have the government taking money out of my paycheck and not acknowledge that it reduces the number of things I can do with what’s left. You also really should be willing to acknowledge the huge waste of resources in the welfare system. It stands to reason that we could provide more help to more people if were significantly less wasteful in our approach.
For me personally, though, the issue isn’t so much about what welfare “prevents” as what it discourages. It’s the mindset: These are big complicated problems that can only be solved by big complicated governments.
Yes and no. I’ll concede that both can coexist, although I’m not impressed with the result so far. Let me try to come at this another way: Look at what has happened in the world of private charities in the last 40 or 50 years. That is, look at all the ways things have changed: New ways of giving, new ways of selecting causes, new ways of distributing benefits. Look at what has happened in the world of welfare benefits: Pretty much nothing. It’s the same monolithic, non-evolving monstrosity that it was when I was a kid. And you want to make it bigger.
That’s what happens with government solutions: They eat and they grow larger. They don’t change and improve. And they become entrenched, so that even programs that are obviously a waste of money (say, corn subsidies) are impossible to get rid of.
You’re saying it’s working, and if we just pour some more money down the hole, then all will be well. And I’m saying I don’t believe you. And I’m saying that while we are economically better off as a whole than we were when I was a kid, the structural problems have only gotten worse. And while it’s probably fair to say that welfare hasn’t caused the problems, it sure doesn’t seem to have made anything any better.
So, do I favor a sudden, wrenching change, to rip the welfare state out of existence? No. But I think it’s past time to recognize that it generally doesn’t work and start trying to wriggle our necks out of the noose. Of course, I say these things knowing that probably less than 1% of the population gets what I’m saying and agrees with me. Yay, democracy.
You’re accusing me of “either-or”, but it sure sounds like you really think that the only support that is “available to you” is that which comes from the government.
Okay, I’m not saying that this is “the solution”, so don’t start revving up your engine. Nonetheless…while I have never had to rely on the government for help, I have definitely had to rely on help from my family. In the not too distant past, people in the same families and communities were very invested in helping and relying on each other, and being able to expect the same in return. And this system has worked (and still works) far better than you’re giving it credit for.
Where families and communities are intact, the need for government assistance is much lower, and people generally do much better than “surviving a few more years”. In my view, the government has been on a campaign to destroy families and communities at lower economic levels. Welfare has been part of it, but the Drug War has been the most devastating weapon against poor people. So, on some level, I keep thinking that the biggest part of “the solution” is to stop the abuse.
And I understand what you’re saying about welfare and how it is demonstrably better than nothing, at least when you look at individual cases. However, I think that you’re failing to recognize the ways that it undermines the social structure. And you clearly have never learned the scariest words in the English language: “We’re from the government, and we’re here to help you.”
Genuinely not trying to be a dick here, but you don’t think that maybe the sort of people who are attracted to libertarianism says something about the quality of libertarian ideas?
Again, I’m not asking for a perfect solution - just one that’s better than what we already have. You’ve said that you want to start shrinking the welfare system. Well, fine - I love the idea of paying less tax, too, but not if it means putting more people on the streets.
I’m not sure you’re right, here. Not about emptying the mental hospitals, but about whether most libertarians would agree that it was a bad idea. That’s pretty directly counter to my own experience with libertarians.
Mental health services are social welfare.
Well, to keep things tied together, Ronald Reagan slashing the budgets of state mental hospitals, forcing them to dump their patients into the streets, is a pretty good example. Things like mandatory drug testing for welfare recipients, or the “punitive, paternalistic junk” that Kansas is taking onto welfare are others. Or you could just look at and Republican authored federal budget from the last thirty years.
Free markets aren’t a libertarian idea. They’re an idea libertarians have, but you’re in no position to claim ownership of the concept. At any rate, when I go out and buy a product, that’s not really a free market at work there, at least, not as most libertarians seem to define the term. When I’m shopping, I’m buying something that’s the result of several layers of heavy regulation, from product safety, to non-polluting manufacturing standards, to minimum wage requirements for workers. I agree that the process works beautifully, but I don’t think it’s one that most libertarians approve of.
… is that good or bad?
I think this rebuts itself.
That’s not what you were saying. You said, “We need to be thinking that the responsibility falls to us, individually, to solve the problems that we see.” You weren’t talking about liberty, you were talking about personal responsibility. That said, “insufficiently individualized” was an awkward paraphrase.
Sorry, but… yeah. I think you’re wrong on your analysis of the issues. The idea of at least one of us not understanding what’s going on is kind of implicit in us having a disagreement.
I meant solve them on an individual <ahem> level. Welfare isn’t going to make poverty go away, or stop people from being crazy, or make sure no one loses a job again. It’s not meant to fix these problems on a societal level, it’s meant to help people facing these problems get by. And in that sense, welfare works every day, when some pays a rent check from his unemployment payments. And fails every day, when another schizophrenic ends up sleeping on the streets because he’s too unstable to hold down a job.
Well, you’re not going to get a fight out of me over corporate subsidies.
Yeah, when I said I’d never needed charity, I was being dumb. For some reason, I wasn’t thinking of family support as charity, which it clearly is, and is something I’ve benefited from in the past, too. I’ve also collected unemployment, so the statement was stupid in two different ways. Sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking when I wrote that.
Also with you on the drug war. I don’t even necessarily disagree with you about the negative effects of being on welfare long-term, although I think you overstate them pretty dramatically. I just don’t see a good alternative.
And I don’t think you appreciate the appalling level of poverty that existed in industrialized nations prior to the creation of the welfare state.
This is profoundly ignorant of actual welfare benefits. These programs change all the time. Keeping up with the changes is actually really fucking hard.
Well, if they were all the same sort, then I would say yes. But they’re not. And to be fair, the crazies are getting pretty loud in the Rep/Dem camps as well. Maybe it’s catching.
Just to be clear, I’m not trying to sell you a platform or convert you into a libertarian. My understanding was that you were trying to understand libertarians better, and I’ve really tried to help in that regard. But I’ve had this fight too many times with too many people who think like you do, and it goes nowhere, and I’m in no mood for it. Besides, one of my friends just called me a “liberal”, so I’m feeling extra cranky.
Fundamentally, though, I would say that what we had before the “great rescue” of the welfare system was better than what we have now. And I know in advance that you’ll respond to that with shock and outrage. It may feel new to you, but it doesn’t to me.
If you want to argue with me to any purpose, you really do need a better understanding of how libertarians think. This bit about individual liberty and government solutions being nightmarish boondoggles is not a catchphrase–it’s at the heart of how we see the world. As long as you’re trumpeting the wonders of the welfare system, you may as well be speaking a different language.
I think we’d probably prefer states taking responsibility rather than the federal government. However, the money that’s being saved by not having them in hospitals simply isn’t that large in the grand scheme. Not speaking for other libertarians, but for myself, I’d say it’s money well spent. Just because we can’t fix them doesn’t mean it’s okay to abandon them. And when the untrained try to take care of them (families, the community), the results are really sad.
You’re welcome to describe it that way. But, in my opinion, there is a world of difference between housing crazy people and the massive entitlements program that is our welfare system.
This is much better, not quite as needlessly inflammatory. Just to be clear, you seem to be saying that, if not for the stuff you’re mentioning, the welfare system would be working great, and was working great prior to these changes, right? You’ve suggested that, even in spite of all this, it still works pretty well. Which means that we are looking at the world and seeing fundamentally different things.
Look, I’m not filing for a patent. Libertarians don’t claim that free markets are a cool new thing we’ve invented. We claim that they are the best way to carry on human economic affairs. It seems to me that you’re trying to deny that they work and that libertarians can take pride in how well they work at the same time.
It’s not a perfectly free market, but it’s a lot closer to free than, say, the Canadian healthcare system. And the array of stuff that you have to choose from, and the low prices you are able to pay for it, are the results of the efficiency of markets, not government regulation.
I see you itching to point out things that are bad about free markets. But you’ve got to allow for the ways that they are good. Or go bother somebody else.
I always thought that speech was incredibly condescending. More to the point, your rehashing of it is, if nothing else, unoriginal, and definitely not free-range.
To most libertarians, personal liberty and personal responsibility go hand in had, practically two sides of the same coin. Somehow, this gets lost in translation continually.
Human societies have become the apex predator and world-owner through our ability to work together and look out for each other. The problem with so much intrusive government is that we’re now training ourselves to expect the nanny government to take care of us. And it can’t; it never could. Meanwhile, a large of number of individual humans are losing all notion of how to actually take care of themselves. And yes, that’s an unsubstantiated opinion, but I believe it.
No, we can both understand the situation just fine and still disagree about what to do next. However, you seem to assume that there’s no such thing as legitimate disagreement–if I don’t agree with you, then I must be failing to understand. If I weren’t so damn stupid, I would see that you are right.
For the record, political debates don’t need any more of that. There’s plenty.
Well, you’ve set a low bar for evaluating success. Basically, if the overall plight of poor people remains unchanged, but you FEEL like it’s doing some good, then these billions of dollars are well spent.
If it’s my money, and you’re going to spend that much of it, I’d like for you to have loftier goals, and some accountability for achieving them.
The structure and working of the system have not changed in any meaningful way. There’s nothing that the welfare state does that it does meaningfully better today. If I decide that I don’t want to debate with you any more, it won’t mean that debating has changed.
Well, as long as so many of us are saying that the boondoggle we have is “good enough”, I don’t think we’re all that likely to find anything better. And any alternatives that are suggested will be shot down pretty quickly by people who think very much like you.
The really appalling levels of poverty were pre-industrialization. Other than the umitigated disaster that was the Great Depression, the poverty has not been nearly so appalling in this century. And I haven’t seen any convincing evidence that welfare has made the situation better. It sure isn’t helping with the structural problems–the .1% are running away with the game, and the poor are going nowhere. And if welfare is doing them any good in that regard, it ain’t doing 'em very MUCH good.
It’s not that government programs accomplish nothing. It’s that they spend massive amounts of money to accomplish not very much. Socialism is not evil, it’s criminally wasteful.
You seem convinced that we’ve got something good to show for the money we’ve thrown into the welfare state. I just don’t see it, not for the amount of money that’s been thrown into it.
Well, I challenged you (or anyone) to defend the claim that private charity discriminates with examples. You, needless to say, didn’t do so. Perhaps you should provide examples of private charities discriminating before you demand that I demonstrate that the government discriminates. Since you made your claim first, that seems fair to me.
Nevertheless, examples in which the government discriminates with its handouts are plentiful. One example is handouts to farmers, which were given almost exclusively to whites for generations, with the Jim Crow-like policies lasting for a remarkably long time. This put nearly all minority farmers in the country out of business; not a small thing, in other words.
A more recent example in the Small Business Administration’s 8(a) program, which is available to any minority business owner but denied to most white business owners. Obamacare exchanges allow those under age 30 to have catastrophic insurance, but not those over 30. That’s an instance of unfair discrimination if there ever was one.
So while there’s no reason to believe that private charities discriminate on the basis of race or any other unfair basis, there’s massive evidence that the government does so. Of course, advocates of big government spend much time and effort attacking libertarians and very little defending what the government does.
But highly relevant to the question of whether the government is discriminatory. You said, “Discrimination by the government is prohibited by law”, and the example of affirmative action proves you wrong. Do you admit to being wrong? Are you honestly going to shift to arguing that the government does discriminate by race and gender and … but just doesn’t do so with handouts?
Well then, why don’t you tell me what species runs the government? Cause if it’s human beings, then the government must discriminate, according to your logic.
(For the record, I agree that all humans discriminate, according to the original definition, “to note or observe a difference”. To believe that physics professors know physics better than others is discriminating, for instance. But this discussion obviously focuses on unfair discrimination, which the government practices routinely and private charities don’t. To muddy the waters by pointing out that private charities discriminate by the original definition would be a silly attempt to dodge the point.)
No, I get that about libertarians. The problem is, it’s based on some objectively wrong assumptions about history and human nature. I mean, there’s not really a debate over whether poverty was better or worse in the 19th century than it is today.
I agree completely. But I think you’re really an outlier among libertarians on this subject.
Again, this isn’t really a debatable subject. This is just basic definitions. Mental health services are a part of our welfare system.
Well, no. What I’m saying is that we do have free markets, as the term is generally understood in mainstream economics, and they work well. Libertarians tend to define “free market” in a much more extreme manner than is used in mainstream economics, and under that definition, we do not have free markets.
Sorry, are you claiming that Canadian health care is more expensive than American health care? Because again, that’s objectively wrong.
Sure, I’m not at all anti-free market. Assuming you don’t define “free market” as “completely unregulated.”
Okay? I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the movie. Michael Douglas, right?
And yet, when we do that and call it “government,” suddenly its a bad thing.
But the overall plight of poor people isn’t unchanged. It’s improved massivelyover the last century and a half.
This is getting more and more bizarrely removed from reality. By any standard, the Clinton overhaul was massive.
I’m open to new alternatives. Maybe you missed my response to your negative income tax idea? I didn’t hate it, but I had some questions about it. But we can’t start taking apart the system that we have without having something ready to replace it. People will literally die if we start doing that.
This century is only fifteen years old. Last century you started seeing genuine improvements as most western countries started moving towards welfare states. The nineteenth century, though? Sorry, but there’s simply no comparison
What are you talking about? Welfare was abolished in the USA in the 1990’s, it was a whole thing.
How do we know this?
If it’s a Basic Income Guarantee, probably “every adult legal resident” or something. This is not a welfare check with conditions.
What you’re describing is the present “Earned Income Credit” program, a limited negative income tax instituted by Nixon to allow the minimum wage to be only half a living wage. It’s a half-measure by negative income tax standards, and creates a lot of income insecurity compared to a B.I.G.
Everyone qualifies for it. All the legislature has to determine is the subsidy level and the subsidy rate, and apply them to everyone. How to keep the program from being messed with and altered? There is no way to do so, other than electing the right legislators.
As a libertarian, I place self-reliance below freedom, opportunity, and self-actualization on my hierarchy of priorities. There’s nothing noble or necessary about starving. And really, self-reliance is already out the window; every day we use roads, schools, fire & police departments, and businesses that were built and staffed by other people. We aren’t all hermits in the woods, here.
Solution: decriminalize drug use.
Here’s where the subsidy rate comes in. Say the subsidy level is $30,000, and the subsidy rate is 50%. A person who makes $0 per year gets $15,000 per year in NIT. A person who makes over $30,000 per year gets $0 in NIT.
In between, each $1 of earned income reduces the subsidy by only 50 cents, so you always come out substantially ahead by working. For example, if you make $15,000 a year in earned income, you get $7,500 per year in NIT. So, so don’t lose your benefits by working, there’s no risk of not being able to get your benefits back if you take a job and then get laid off, and the way to improve your situation is by working - but if you can’t or won’t get a job, you aren’t left to die.
Right, there was plenty of that sort of discrimination, which is why laws have been since passed to address them. Laws that don’t apply to private charities.
What’s your premise, here, exactly? That all the people prone to discrimination went to work for the government, because evil recognizes evil? None of them are affiliated with a local church, or other private charity? Not that this sort of discrimination requires deliberate, conscious effort, again it’s in part due to people’s ingroups and social circles.
Affirmative action in college admissions can’t be reduced to something as simple as “discrimination by the government”. Aid programs have a simple goal: give people aid. The goals of college admissions are far more complex, and not just a matter of taking the highest test scores. I will agree that the sort of AA programs that were prohibited by Gratz v. Bollinger were discriminatory, sure.
Left to its own devices, absolutely. Your examples (and there are others, like GI Bill benefits) make that plain. But the government is positioned to do something that private charities can’t: prohibit itself from discriminating (such as Title VI of the Civil Rights Act), and enforce that through court decisions. A private charity can pass a bylaw that states it shall not discriminate, but there’s no consequence for breaking it, since the conduct isn’t illegal.
Tell me again how you know that private charities don’t discriminate? I can point to examples where they have, and since it’s legal for them to do so, is anyone systematically tracking or studying this?
Wait, what? A lo of your factual assertions don’t stand up. When did the government pass a law to address the SBA’s 8(a) program. The program still exists, according to the SBA’s website. Likewise the age discrimination in Obamacare. When was that addressed by law?
Your premise was an attack against private charity. In your words, a system where charity is given voluntarily “won’t equally well for all poor people. If you’re the right religion, live in the right area, are the right race, and have the right social circle, you may do just fine. What if you don’t?”
My premise is simply that your premise is wrong. We still lack a single example of a charity discriminating by race; presumably you don’t have one. Yet even if you offered some number of examples of charities discriminating by race, it wouldn’t justify any belief that the problem is widespread. There are a vast number of charitable organization in this country, and even if one organization failed certain individuals, there would be plenty of others willing to help. In a more libertarian country, where the government stopped preventing people from helping the poor, there would be even more charitable options. (And I will emphasize again, we have yet to see a single example of a charity that discriminates on the basis of race.)
Um, no. Even if the source that you linked to is accurate, is does not say that the Salvation Army generally denies aid to LGBT people.
I work at the Salvation Army for about 3-4 hours a week, preparing and serving food. We offer meals to any person who comes through the door, not caring about race or religion or sexual orientation or age, and not requiring anyone to present ID or fill out forms or demonstrate citizenship or anything else whatever. The same cannot be said for the Food Stamp program or most other government programs.
Also, since this thread started as an attack on libertarians, I’ll point out what I’ve shown earlier. The Libertarian Party has a consistent record of supporting decriminalizing all sexual preferences for adults and gay marriage for as long as it has existed. Big government parties, such as the Democrats and Republicans, have basically the opposite record.
Geeze, read my posts. I already cited one: the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Check out Title VI. If a federal agency discriminates against you, you have a Title VI claim. If a private charity does, you…have no recourse whatsoever.
It says here that relief for a claim of discrimination under the 8(a) program can be heard in federal court. Likewise, an Age Discrimination Act suit could be brought for a claim of age discrimination under the ACA.
Further, there’s a world of difference between a program like 8(a), with a lengthy list of eligibility requirements and an application process, and a universal entitlement program like the NIT I propose. In the former case, it’s certainly possibly to craft a program that’s discriminatory. In the latter case, it’s much, much harder, and may not be possible. I support universal programs, and not ones like 8(a).
No, it’s not. If I said hot air balloons couldn’t travel to the moon, is that an “attack on hot air balloons”, or a statement of fact? Private charity is fine. It’s just not universal, and it can’t be.
That remains true. You’re imagining people being flatly denied aid, which certainly can happen, but it’s not what I had in mind.
You ask for anecdotes, then emphasize that anecdotes don’t matter to your claim. Noted.
You’re free to believe that every single needy person can be equally aided by private charity, in defiance of history and recent events. As for me, I’ll put my stock in people responding to incentives, and the power of law. We can each vote accordingly.
I didn’t say they “generally” did so, I said their discrimination sometimes rose to the point of denying aid.
You don’t see all the people who don’t come through the door, though. You don’t see the people who live in rural areas and can’t make it, the LGBT / non-Christian / whatever people who feel unwelcome or threatened, the people from a different part of town who rely on other forms of support that offer less aid, the people who feel shamed by a face-to-face handout, and so on.
Not so much as you might think. Most would probably focus on the fact that this should be a “local” issue and not a federal one. While I generally agree, it doesn’t–for me–follow that once so much of the funding had become federal, it made sense to kick them all out on the street.
And in my list of majorly broken things in the U.S., a whole lot of things would have to get a whole lot better for federal funding of mental hospitals to rise very high up my list, so I just can’t get very excited talking about it. My point is that most of the homeless people on the street don’t represent a failure to care for the poor (welfare), but a failure to take care of the insane.
I know you think of it that way, but from where I’m sitting, “entitlement” programs (handing out checks/food stamps to individuals) are very different from funding for mental hospitals.
So, you can keep saying they’re the same things, but I will continue to act like they are different subjects.
“Free market” is not a binary term. Some are more free than others. The only point I’m making is that, when you’re shopping at Wal Mart, what you’re participating in is a lot more like a free market than the Canadian Health Care system, which is not particularly like a free market. Any other points you think I was trying to make exist solely in your imagination.
It’s not generally a libertarian position to claim that anything short of a totally free market is broken and can’t work. Rather, we generally say that the more free a market is, the better. When you shop at Wal Mart, you’re getting a great many of the benefits that free markets provide. When you participate in the Canadian Healthcare system, you’re not. Does that mean the Canadian Healthcare system is completely broken and provides no benefits? No. But most libertarians believe that if it WERE a free market, it would work better.
I also wouldn’t claim that the US Healthcare system is a free market, but it’s a lot more confusing to try to talk about, and I was going for a more straightforward example.
Meh. More binary declarations. I’m not one of THOSE libertarians. For me, personally, there is some room in our non-ideal real world for regulation, but it’s reasonable to predict that what I think is the right amount is a whole lot less than what YOU think is the right amount.
That’s the one. To be fair, it’s not a bad movie. It was only that last bit, where it turned into a Democratic platform ad, that filled me with the urge slap someone around. Unfortunately for me, my wife really likes that movie.
That is almost exactly the point…it’s not the “calling it” that’s the problem…more below.
It changed a great deal, particularly from the middle of the 1800s thru the middle of the 1900s, primarily due to changes to the economic structure of the country. However, your welfare state didn’t START existing until the middle of the 1900s, with the key portions appearing in the 1960s. So, when you suggest that all this improvement in the lives of the poor are a result of the creation of the welfare state, I’m not going to just quietly let it pass. Your welfare state came along *after *most of the action.
I recognize that we can interpret things differently (what’s massive, what’s not, what’s a change in scale, what’s a change in kind) without one of us being out of touch with reality. It would be nice if you would do the same.
You’ve got me confused with someone else–that wasn’t my suggestion, and, for what it’s worth, I’m not crazy about the idea.
I moved this to the end, because I think it’s the crux of where we see the world differently, with human nature being at the very heart of it. As a start, I think that if humans were more like ants or bees, then something like socialism would probably work–at least better than it does with real humans. But we’re not like bees; we’re tool-making apes.
FIRST: Regardless of what kind of government or economic system you have, there are going to be human failures, bad outcomes. There’s a reason why evolution is so damn cold-hearted: This world does not make allowances for creatures that don’t find a way take care of themselves. Humans have found a lot of ways to circumvent the harshness of our world by teaming up; it’s why families and communities are so crucial to our success. But unless something changes in a big way, we can’t save them all, whether we want to or not.
SECOND: One key difference between, say, families helping each other or private charities helping people and social welfare programs is pretty much encapsulated in the word “entitlement”. When a person is receiving help because the law says they are entitled to it, there is a whole different mindset. There is no feeling of what southerners call “being beholden” to the people helping you. I can expound on this, but I expect you know where I’m going.
THIRD: With regard to a great many people, there are two competing thresholds in play. One is the amount of help they need in order for it to improve their future ability to be independent. For many, they would need a good deal more (possibly over a shorter time frame) to achieve a long-lasting effect. The other threshold is the amount that’s “all I need to get by” and serves as a disincentive for them to improve themselves or change their lives. The key point is that threshold for helping some who really “deserve” it is higher than the threshold for creating “entitled do-nothings” out of others. And you’re never going to be able to create a bureaucratic process that’s going to get this right.
This is what creates the ongoing tension that we have now. On the one hand, you have certain people that get a handout, live in squalor, and keep a drug habit going (and these stories drive the Republicans crazy). On the other hand, you have people that are really trying to make something out of themselves but can never manage to bail water as fast as it’s pouring in (and these stories drive the Democrats crazy). Best you can hope for is to balance out the outrage on both sides. And in this ongoing game of tug-of-war, the people who need the help, well, they’re the rope.
FOURTH: For many libertarians, this is the key. By creating a federal entitlement program or, by god, a socialist state, you’re putting the implementation of your solution in the hands of the government, which is composed of politicians and bureaucrats. Keep in mind that the core qualifications for being a successful politician are public speaking, dissembling, and collecting campaign contributions. Somehow, though, you think these people are going to be the right ones to create and implement your plan for a better world. And I’m the one who is divorced from reality.
As a corollary to that, the more Big Government programs we create, the more money and power there is to be had by joining the machine. So, the bigger the government gets, the more money and power are funneled through it, the more of a lure it becomes for charming sociopaths who want the money and power but can’t enjoy if they have to do honest work for it.
So, the core of my FOURTH point is that government action is different in kind from any other human activity. The federal government is the highest authority and, as a whole, it answers to no one. There is no real pressure on it to be efficient because it has no competition. For libertarians–and to a good many of our Founding Fathers–the only solution to this problem is to keep government as small as possible, to use it only for things that can be accomplished by no other means. And for us, helping the poor doesn’t fall into this category. It’s NOT the case that (most) libertarians think that we shouldn’t help those who need it; it IS the case that we think using government power to do it is a dangerous mistake–the cure is worse than the disease. And that’s why I keep saying that for me to back away from this stance, you’d need a LOT more evidence that your welfare programs yield long-term “good” results–that is, way better than we can achieve by any other means.
WRAP-UP: You’ve done a lot of complaining about how Republicans have “ruined” the safety net. (And I can easily find a Republican who will rail about how the goddamn liberals are giving all of our money away to a bunch addicts and criminals.) I stand in a different place from both of you. I think a great many Republicans are self-righteous (and, lately, furious) pricks. At the same time, I think a great many Democrats have admirable goals and foolishly naïve ideas of how to achieve them.
How dare I call you naïve? Let’s review. You’ve got a vision for a country that does not let it’s people starve, that provides a “safety net” for people who trip up, and provides maximum opportunity for all. And you think it’s a good idea to put that vision in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats; you think a roomful of corrupt narcissists are going to be bring about your utopia. And you have the nerve to look surprised when your Safety Net becomes a political football that gets kicked all over the field every 4 years.
As a libertarian, I don’t want something this important to our personal values in the hands of the politicians. Whether we’re talking about families, communities, private charities, or Some Other Option, I want decisions being made by people who are close enough to the subjects to make good decisions. I want the “solution” to be controlled by people who care passionately about making it work. Because people who care passionately about solving problems often find solutions. And politicians and bureaucrats…well, I think on some level we all know what THEY do.
If you really want to understand how libertarians think, and how we come up with the reportedly crazy ideas that we do, I don’t really see how I can make it any clearer than this.