# Personal responsibility, or avoiding responsibility? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 24, 2019, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550 "2019-07-24T16:29:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 11
**Author:** ![steronz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steronz/32/11765_2.png) [@steronz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/steronz)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2019, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/202 "2019-07-29T18:13:19Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Then why do you keep bringing up Mitt Romney, and what he said about taxes? “I’ll never convince them to take personal responsibility and care for their lives” is a strange way to talk about taxes. I’m still trying to figure out what part of my argument you folks are objecting to. Do you, Shodan, feel any responsibility to help out your fellow Americans if you don’t feel that they’re taking sufficient personal responsibility for their own situation? ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2019, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/203 "2019-07-29T18:46:36Z")
> [@Wrenching\_Spanners](#): > > So much to refute here. Apologies to Bone, but it’s going to require me to use your fisking style to point out all the wrongs in your statements. On preview, I realize that this is actually all just a hijack of whataboutism in trying to point fingers at the democrats about personal responsibility and student debt, and is not relevant to the thread, so this will probably be my last post on this subject on this thread. If you’d like to discuss monetary policy further, we can do that elsewhere, and if you want to talk student debt, I think that there are probably already threads about it. But, as I did spend a decent amount of time on this, I’m gonna hit submit anyway. Let me know if you would like to continue this elsewhere. > [@](#): > > Since you’ve referred to the fractional banking system, I assume your definition of money is “commercial banking money”. I can only guess as why you failed to type the two extra words. There is a causation effect between commercial banking money and the M2 value of money supply. However, you’re really stretching it if you mean that a lower market for loans results in lower interest rates which further results in a reduction in deposits leading to a diminishment in money supply is “destroying money”. Or perhaps you’d like to explicitly detail your explanation of how loan repayments are “destroying money”. Are you under the impression that commercial banks only lend to commercial entities? I am stating specifically and simply that paying a debt destroys money, that’s how it works. [Here’s the bank of England on the subject.](https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-bulletin/2014/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy.pdf?la=en&hash=9A8788FD44A62D8BB927123544205CE476E01654) some quotes > [@](#): > > Whenever a bank makes a loan, it > simultaneously creates a matching deposit in the > borrower’s bank account, thereby creating new money. > … > Rather than banks receiving deposits when households > save and then lending them out, bank lending creates > deposits. > … > One common misconception is > that banks act simply as intermediaries, lending out the > deposits that savers place with them. In > … > Commercial banks create money, in the form of bank deposits, > by making new loans. When a bank makes a loan, for example > to someone taking out a mortgage to buy a house, it does not > typically do so by giving them thousands of pounds worth of > banknotes. Instead, it credits their bank account with a bank > deposit of the size of the mortgage. At that moment, new > money is created. > … > Just as taking out a new loan creates money, the repayment of > bank loans destroys money. For example, suppose a > consumer has spent money in the supermarket throughout the > month by using a credit card. Each purchase made using the credit card will have increased the outstanding loans on the > consumer’s balance sheet and the deposits on the > supermarket’s balance sheet. If the consumer were then to pay their credit card bill in full at the end of the month, its bank would reduce the > amount of deposits in the consumer’s account by the value of > the credit card bill, thus destroying all of the newly created > money. That PDF also contains links to some videos where they discuss the subject further, if that is an easier medium for you. > [@](#): > > Your cite discusses the US Federal Reserve management of interest rate policy, and indicates they may be overpaying for “interest on excess reserves”. The federal reserve is ensuring that banks are able to borrow cheaply, in order for the banking system to have liquidity, but also ensuring that banks maintain adequate reserves – in other words hold more than the required minimum. Basically the article is saying that the federal reserve is getting the balancing act wrong. There may be a slowdown in some global lending, but if so it’s due to: 1) fears that the current upward business cycle is coming to an end, both because of a fear that the cycle has reached a natural peak, and because of uncertainty regarding US, Chinese, and European trade policies, 2) inflationary pressures which may require tighter monetary policy, and 3) the weaning off of cheap credit which, regardless of the fears outlined in point 1, is a move towards long-term monetary policy stability. Any shortage in current lending is not due to people paying off their loans. Furthermore, according to the IMF, global lending was at an all-time high in 2017. [https://blogs.imf.org/2019/01/02/new-data-on-global-debt/](https://blogs.imf.org/2019/01/02/new-data-on-global-debt/) Do you want debt to continually rise, or would you prefer it to taper off after reaching a peak? My cite was solely to refute your assertion that banks are waiting on deposits to be made or loans to be repaid before they are able to issue new loans. The reason that they are not issuing as many loans as they would like, where they get a much higher interest rate than off the excess reserves, is because there is not enough demand from qualified borrowers, and the reason that there is not enough demand from qualified borrowers is because there is not enough demand for increasing our capacity for delivering new goods and services. This is a consumer driven economy, and while supply side economics may occasionally be valid, at most times, including this one, it is not. > [@](#): > > A much worse thing you can do to a bank is create a moral hazard where customers feel it is unnecessary to pay off their loans, and then the government, or whatever other intervening agency, also refuses to pay off those loans. That would be bad, but it would be hard to compare, as either would crater the economy, fortunately, no one is suggesting any such thing. To get back to the thread, you may say it is detrimental to create a moral hazard where a CEO is able to write their own paycheck, and make millions or more off a company going bankrupt, where they get to gain great personal wealth and leave their employees and creditors to pay for it. > [@](#): > > This statement is so problematic, I’m not sure if I’m being whooshed. You started your response addressing the fractional banking system. You do realise that is dependent on deposits and not magical money? I put “magic” in quotes for a reason, but are you trying to say that you think that lending is dependent on deposits, and not on fiat currency? > [@](#): > > Congratulations. Ignoring the misspelling of frivolities, it’s one of the few things you haven’t got wrong. Would you say that declaring bankruptcy is personal responsibility? > [@](#): > > Here’s your statement: “There is 1.5 trillion in student debt, and that is 1.5 trillion dollars that will not be contributing to the economy.” I’m rebutting that statement. Actually, you are correct in that statement is not entirely correct. That 1.5 is the current debt. Not only will that number be going up as more students go into debt, but the repayment of that 1.5 trillion will be more like 3-4 trillion in actual payments after interest. But yes, I am sticking to my statement that money that goes towards paying debts is money that is not being spent in the economy. You have not refuted that, nor posed anything that makes a good go at rebutting it. > [@](#): > > If the students taking on the loans have correctly bet that their future earnings will exceed their debt payments, their debt payments haven’t stopped them from doing anything. If they were wrong, then yes, they are undergoing some hardship, but it’s a hardship they signed up for. The initial economic benefit went to the school. You’re right that a subsequent economic benefit is going to Sallie Mae, which, if I’m understanding correctly, is the bank collecting interest on the loans? Please correct me if I have a misunderstanding. Otherwise, please explain to me why you object to a bank receiving interest on a loan? This misstates my position yet again, as your question is irrelevant. Students should not have ever had to have taken on such a debt in order to have a decent shot at a living wage, and those who have had to make that choice should have a way to assist them in getting out from under the debt they had to take. Yes, new graduates spending money setting up their lives are going to contribute more to the economy than CEOs at Sallie Mae getting bonuses. > [@](#): > > The single-best economic stimulus is investment, which funnily enough is often government investment. Picking an easy two, federal vaccination programmes and the US interstate system are two incredibly effective economic stimuli. Beyond the simple true-false refuting of your statement, it’s quite complicated. You’re assuming that the money spent by Sallie Mac will have less economic impact than the money that would have been spent by the loan paying students. If you’d like to discuss that idea, feel free to open up a new thread. Your assumption is not a self-evident truth. Funny you should say that, as the actual best government investment in economic stimulus is education. If you get rid of the mountain of debt that a new student is signing up for, then you create more graduates, who make more innovations and spend more money, didn’t you put up a cite before that having college graduates is good for the economy? Why would you choose to follow policies that make people avoid going to college? > [@](#): > > Actually, deferred spending in terms of saving and investment matter hugely to the economy. Also, relevant to this thread, hasn’t spending already happened? A purchase of a college education has taken place. Are you discounting a college education and saying it has less value than “moving out, renting an apartment, buying a car, buying a house, starting a family, starting a business, or just spending their money on small comforts and luxuries”? They are not deferring their spending in terms of saving and investment, they are deferring spending because they are paying off loans. As far as saving and investment, that is another thing that they are being denied. If you start saving for retirement in your 20’s, you are going to be in a far better position than if you start in your 30’s. This is forcing them to deffer their savings and investment until later in life when it will do them less good. I do not say that a college degree has no value, as many employers obviously put a great deal of value on it. In fact, it has become so necessary to have a college degree, that many employers are now asking potential employees to go even further into debt for more advanced degrees. > [@](#): > > My statement: “Why should the rest of society, including people who didn’t go to college, pay for their lack of forethought?” Which statement of yours am I creating a false likeness of in order to burn down? None of my statements, as that is more or less out of whole cloth. I may as well ask you “Why won’t you stop beating your wife?” for as leading and inaccurate as your statement was. A better question, and one that is relevant, is “Why do you not think that society should provide an education adequate to achieve a living wage to our next generation?” > [@](#): > > I’m basing my arguments on the CNBC article I originally cited: > “Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., introduced a bill Tuesday that would forgive student loans for tens of millions of Americans. Three-quarters of borrowers would have their balances reset to zero.” > [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/23/elizabeth-warrens-student-debt-bill-would-help-45-million-students.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/23/elizabeth-warrens-student-debt-bill-would-help-45-million-students.html) > If you think that Elizabeth Warren’s bill is wrong, then we’re in agreement. If you think that more information should be supplied more explicitly to students requesting student loans, then we’re probably in agreement, although I doubt the relevant information is actually hidden. Meh, that’s a good negotiation starting point. Look, if we want to talk policy, and what is best for the the students and the economy, we can have a give and take, and I can lay out what I think would be best, both as being practical and fair to students, both future and past, and what I think would be a good compromise. We could probably agree on most things, but I do think that it is more than just information to prospective students that is a problem. But if we are having a negotiation, and you are coming from the position that nothing should be done, I cannot start at my compromise position, as then we end up on a policy that is somewhere between the minimum that needs to be done and nothing. By starting from extreme the position of wiping out all student debt, and giving a pro-rated check to all previous SD holders, then we can find a middle ground that is actually useful. > [@](#): > > I’m assuming that if they’re under 18, there’s a parent approving the loan, but please correct me if I’m wrong. Beyond that, yes, I do believe an 18 year old, or a near 18 year old should be able to do a risk assessment. I’d hope there would be guidance counsellors available to assist them with that risk assessment. If such guidance counsellors aren’t available, then that’s a community flaw. The risk assessment is that if you don’t take on this loan, you will struggle with low wage jobs the rest of your life. That is not a fair assessment to force someone to make, especially teens and young adults. I really do see it as extortion on some levels, and that it is not a choice that is made without duress. > [@](#): > > Yes. There is always an element of risk in life. One person may choose to drive drunk and not be caught. A second person may choose to drive drunk and get caught and punished. They each had personable responsibility for their actions. The luck of the unpunished drunk driver’s outcome does not provide moral justification for his decision. Choosing a path through college is far less binary than either of the above examples. However, choosing to accept and pay a loan is, compared to many other decisions in life, a straightforward choice and on where the debtor should be personally responsible for accepting the loan. Do you think that society should provide our next generation with the tools that are required to succeed? 50 years ago, a high school diploma was enough to live a decent life and raise a family, and that high school diploma was paid for by society. Now we are in a time when a high school diploma is not enough to achieve a living wage for most, and so I do think that society owes that generation the education it needs to achieve that. How exactly we go about that is a complicated subject that will probably require quite a bit of compromise where no one is able to really get what they want, but my point is that your assertion that democrats are hypocrites to talk about personal responsibility because they are concerned about the effect of student debt on the economy and on future generations was not just simplistic, but actually utterly wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Kearsen1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Kearsen1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kearsen1)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2019, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/204 "2019-07-29T19:01:05Z")
> [@steronz](#): > > “I’ll never convince them to take personal responsibility and care for their lives” is a strange way to talk about taxes. > I’m still trying to figure out what part of my argument you folks are objecting to. Do you, Shodan, feel any responsibility to help out your fellow Americans if you don’t feel that they’re taking sufficient personal responsibility for their own situation? Yes, it is your thread but you still haven’t accepted the many statements from conservatives telling you what personal responsibility is and how it very much differs from what you are trying to argue. So what exactly is the debate to be had? You aren’t objecting to personal responsibility, you are resenting when people tell others that they should have been personally responsible. If they should have, then they should have and yes others whom have been personally responsible will probably judge them. Determining what to do with them, how to help them, if to help them, is a different discussion I suppose. Whether or not someone else feels responsible for helping them or not, is still irrelevant to the conservative mindset of what personal responsibility. Personal meaning an individual. And everyone (in a conservatives eyes) is responsible for themselves. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2019, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/205 "2019-07-29T19:07:39Z")
> [@steronz](#): > > “I’ll never convince them to take personal responsibility and care for their lives” is a strange way to talk about taxes. Perhaps you aren’t understanding what Romney was saying, and that it was a bad example. > [@](#): > > I’m still trying to figure out what part of my argument you folks are objecting to. The part where you are saying that I am responsible for fixing someone else’s problems when I didn’t cause them. > [@](#): > > Do you, Shodan, feel any responsibility to help out your fellow Americans if you don’t feel that they’re taking sufficient personal responsibility for their own situation? Up to a point, sure. If they are threatened with some dire catastrophe, that could mean I help, at least the first time or two. But not based on any idea that I am responsible for it. If you are confronted with someone in a situation - they’re poor, for instance, not starving, but poor. You gave them $100 for groceries, out of a sense of altruism. Instead, they spent it all on lottery tickets. They ask you for another $100. You ask them what they are going to spend it on, and they reply that they have no reason to change anything - fixing the problem of their poverty is entirely up to you. Do you feel any responsibility for helping them? Are you responsible for fixing their problems, no matter what they do? Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2019, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/206 "2019-07-29T19:14:08Z")
> [@Wrenching\_Spanners](#): > > I’m assuming that if they’re under 18, there’s a parent approving the loan, but please correct me if I’m wrong. Beyond that, yes, I do believe an 18 year old, or a near 18 year old should be able to do a risk assessment. I’d hope there would be guidance counsellors available to assist them with that risk assessment. If such guidance counsellors aren’t available, then that’s a community flaw. I have a question to springboard off of this - should the same standard apply to a business, run by a person or board of people over the age of 18? Because I have seen a lot of people who advocate ‘personal responsibility’ also advocate for Right To Work laws, and it seems rather strange to me that a ‘near 18-year-old’ is expected to bear personal responsibility for a potentially bad contract decision, but that a business run by a much older person gets the possibility of a contract they don’t like outright forbidden by law. Why is a business owner negotiating with employees held to a much lower standard of personal responsibility than some kid with no real-world experience yet? It would seem to me that advocates of Personal Responsibility should be staunchly opposed to Right to Work laws, especially if they are also fans of “Small Government”, and yet the majority of the time they just aren’t. Further question: Shouldn’t the people giving loans take some responsibility for their loans in the first place? By making the loans not dischargeable in bankruptcy, it removes the risk to the lender of making the loan to someone who is not going to be able to actually pay the loan in the first place. You would think that advocates of ‘personal responsibility’ would argue that the lender of this specific type of loan should have to take the same risk of non-payment as the lenders of other loans, but for some reason people who make this loan aren’t required to take responsibility for their bad lending decisions. Why doesn’t any of the blame for these bad decisions lie on the person who’s protected by law from the consequence of the bad decision? ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2019, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/207 "2019-07-29T19:20:30Z")
> [@Scylla](#): > > Thorny: > > I know I promised you the last word, but I cannot stand to see the math butchered the way you did. > > You can’t add percentages that way. > > If 50% of people are male, and 50% of people are female and 20% are minorities and 20% are left handed, and 39% admit to picking their noses and eating when nobody is looking that does not add up to 179% Three things: One, those examples aside from the genders are all overlapping categories. You gave the statistics which I added as separate categories, which can indeed be added, just as 39% male adults and 11% male children would add up to 50% male; and just as 50% male and 50% female would add up to 100% of the group as given. I didn’t have the time, and don’t have it now, to drill down through your figures in further detail. But people who are entirely unemployed and those who are working part time but would like to work full time are indeed two separate categories. I will grant you that I may have misunderstood “Those who usually work full time living in poverty”; I took it to mean people who do have full time jobs at the time of the statistic, but perhaps that figure includes both some people currently working part time and some people not employed at all, in which case you’re correct that it couldn’t simply be added; though as at least some people in that group would be neither unemployed nor working part time some portion of it would be additive. Two: I was talking about all market forces, not only about wages. What I am worried about isn’t only wages; it’s that in general in this game of musical chairs there are fewer chairs than people. The “chairs” are jobs in which one can make a living. They not only don’t include full time jobs at poverty level or lower wages, they also don’t include part time jobs when full time are needed, and they don’t include jobs which for any of a number of reasons aren’t accessible to people who need a job and are willing to work at it. Three: did you miss the part where I said the exact percentage doesn’t matter; the issue is that it’s not right to blame people for not being able to meet their bills when the system requires there to be people who aren’t able to meet their bills? ---
**Author:** ![steronz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steronz/32/11765_2.png) [@steronz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/steronz)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2019, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/208 "2019-07-29T19:29:59Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > If you are confronted with someone in a situation - they’re poor, for instance, not starving, but poor. You gave them $100 for groceries, out of a sense of altruism. Instead, they spent it all on lottery tickets. They ask you for another $100. You ask them what they are going to spend it on, and they reply that they have no reason to change anything - fixing the problem of their poverty is entirely up to you. > > Do you feel any responsibility for helping them? Are you responsible for fixing their problems, no matter what they do? I’m not sure you intended for your example here to be as perfect as it is. As a voting member of American society, I am complicit in allowing lottery tickets to be a thing that exists – after all, lottery tickets in this country are, largely, a government activity. And as a taxpayer, I personally benefit from the money my state government brings in from lottery ticket sales. So yeah, if some guy with a gambling addiction is blowing all of his money on lottery tickets and ruining his life, _of course_ I feel some responsibility for his situation. My inability to fix it single-handedly, or the fact that handing him cash won’t make it better, doesn’t absolve me of my role in the society that we’ve created. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2019, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/209 "2019-07-29T20:07:37Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Three things: > One, those examples aside from the genders are all overlapping categories. You gave the statistics which I added as separate categories, which can indeed be added, just as 39% male adults and 11% male children would add up to 50% male; and just as 50% male and 50% female would add up to 100% of the group as given. No. Just no. They are overlapping. The total of all working poor is 4.5%. You can’t add up numbers from within that to get a number that is higher. Jesus. > [@](#): > > I didn’t have the time, and don’t have it now, to drill down through your figures in further detail. Or the knowledge, don’t forget that. > [@](#): > > But people who are entirely unemployed and those who are working part time but would like to work full time are indeed two separate categories. I will grant you that I may have misunderstood “Those who usually work full time living in poverty”; I took it to mean people who do have full time jobs at the time of the statistic, but perhaps that figure includes both some people currently working part time and some people not employed at all, in which case you’re correct that it couldn’t simply be added; though as at least some people in that group would be neither unemployed nor working part time some portion of it would be additive. It sounds like you are confused and don’t know what you are talking about. The actual number of the working poor who usually work full time is 1.55% of the workforce as of 2017. I posted the other stats to show you a breakdown and I know you don’t use statista which is good for getting this, and I know you are not an economics or a math dude. It’s 1.55% > [@](#): > > Two: I was talking about all market forces, not only about wages. What I am worried about isn’t only wages; it’s that in general in this game of musical chairs there are fewer chairs than people. The “chairs” are jobs in which one can make a living. They not only don’t include full time jobs at poverty level or lower wages, they also don’t include part time jobs when full time are needed, and they don’t include jobs which for any of a number of reasons aren’t accessible to people who need a job and are willing to work at it. And I already posted you a cite showing that their are more jobs than people to fill them right now. You really don’t seem to understand how good the labor market is right now. Do you have any idea how low the working poor number is? Consider that 1.55% of the workforce usually works full time and is currently living below the poverty level and have low wages as a contributing factor. It is not measured further to say what fraction of those have been fired or layed off. However, it would be a sizable majority. Another fraction will be those who were unemployed but have recently started working. The number that you are looking for is those who are and have been working full time jobs for some time and are living below the poverty line. That number does not exist. It is too tiny to be worth measuring, and/or exists within the margin for error. We call this “nil,”. A really small number that is not quite 0. This narrative or problem that you are describing basically does not exist. > [@](#): > > Three: did you miss the part where I said the exact percentage doesn’t matter; the issue is that it’s not right to blame people for not being able to meet their bills when the system requires there to be people who aren’t able to meet their bills? It requires people in transition and what? Who’s blaming? ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2019, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/210 "2019-07-29T20:43:42Z")
> [@Scylla](#): > > No. Just no. They are overlapping. The total of all working poor is 4.5%. You can’t add up numbers from within that to get a number that is higher. Oh, I see what you’re saying. You’re saying that the term “working poor” includes poor people who aren’t working. That’s a really confusing way of putting it. More later, probably. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2019, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/211 "2019-07-29T20:57:21Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Oh, I see what you’re saying. You’re saying that the term “working poor” includes poor people who aren’t working. > > That’s a really confusing way of putting it. > > More later, probably. Not really. The term applies to the workforce which includes the unemployed seeking work. Anyway, I didn’t define the statistic, the BLS did, so take it up with them. It includes full time, part time and unemployed who have been in the workforce (working or trying to work) for 26 or 27 weeks (I forget which.). I defined the term for you when I used it to avoid this kind of confusion. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2019, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/212 "2019-07-30T03:08:31Z")
> [@Scylla](#): > > I defined the term for you when I used it to avoid this kind of confusion. [goes back and re-reads post] Yes, you did. I must have been half asleep when I read that the first time. I withdraw the portion of my post in which I was adding up statistics. As I’m half asleep now, I’ll wait to say anything else. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2019, 11:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/213 "2019-07-30T11:36:17Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > [goes back and re-reads post] > > Yes, you did. I must have been half asleep when I read that the first time. > > I withdraw the portion of my post in which I was adding up statistics. > > As I’m half asleep now, I’ll wait to say anything else. I like you much better when you are sedated. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2019, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/214 "2019-07-30T16:08:34Z")
To say I’ve had trouble following this thread is… an understatement. I’ve read it all a couple times through and might as well start back up at the top. I find **Wrenching Spanners** ’s post #12 to be self-contradictory: > [@Wrenching Spanners](#): > > However, suppose that the Neighbourhood A school has a much more effective PTA than the Neighbourhood B school and thus performs better. That’s an unequal situation, but not an unfair one. That situation _is_ unfair for the children of Neighborhood B. The children are not responsible for their parent-teacher association’s effectiveness, but it is the children whose education suffers as a result. I’ve put a long explanation below, in case that doesn’t make sense. * * * If we make a few basic assumptions, which I hope you will find uncontroversial, I hope to expose the precise contradiction in this position. [ul][li]First is the doctrine of equity or _fairness_: an assumption that all children have the right to a good education. In your own words you “regard fairness as a conservative value”.[/li] [li]Second is the assumption that Neighborhood B school, on account of its ineffective parent-teacher association, is incapable of providing a good education for many of its students.[/li] [li]Third is the assumption that some parents of Neighborhood B are responsible for the ineffective parent-teacher association; it is in no way the fault of the schoolchildren or the teachers (who are excellent). It is not necessarily that the parents are bad or malicious, just that they are not _effective_.[/li] [li]Fourth is the assumption that the ineffective parents of Neighborhood B may not be denied representation in the parent-teacher association, nor may they be expelled from the school, nor may they be forced to give the state custody of their children, nor may they be forced to be effective.[/li] [li]Fifth is the doctrine of personal responsibility: one is only responsible for one’s own actions. This is the traditional definition, not the one **Scylla** advanced (which I recently adopted in [POST=21769463]post #34[/POST]"). “You and the other residents of your neighborhood have a personal responsibility for the actions that take place in your neighborhood, not the neighborhood down the road.” The parents in Neighborhood A are responsible for the parent-teacher association in Neighborhood A; they are _not_ responsible for the parent-teacher association in Neighborhood B. “Blame is not an inheritable liability”.[/ul][/li] Now on to the analysis. It is clear that the students of Neighborhood B school are being denied a good education (2), and that a good education is their right (1), therefore the children are being denied a right. Further, the blame falls entirely upon some parents of Neighborhood B (3). Neither the parents of Neighborhood A nor the children of either neighborhood are to blame or have any personal responsibility in the matter (5). Therefore we have a situation where some parents have deprived many children of their rights, but there is no recourse (4). This is perfectly fair to the parents of Neighborhood B, and possibly to the “families” of Neighborhood B, who are effectively curtailing their own rights; it is fair for you, a parent in Neighborhood A, who had nothing to do with the matter. But if you _think of the children_, it becomes clear that children are being deprived of their rights due to no fault of their own, which is in and of itself _unfair_. Therefore you, on behalf of the whole of society, have the choice between reneging the rights of Neighborhood B (expelling certain parents from the PTA, taking custody of the children), waiving your immunity from responsibility (throwing money at the school, shuttering the school and busing students to Neighborhood A school), or abandoning fairness by allowing the children to suffer (status quo). Barring some other doctrine, ```auto personal responsibility alone cannot make this choice ``` . Now on to a more controversial idea. Collective responsibility might make the choice. The state runs the school. The state guarantees every child’s right to a good education; in fact, the state/society guarantees the rights of all innocents. Some might make an exception for acts of God, but that doesn’t apply here where the causes are all acts of man. The state is at fault when, for whatever reason, the children do not have the opportunity for a good education. And all citizens, even those of Neighborhood A, take part in the collective responsibility represented by the state. Therefore the liability shifts from the parents to the state; the state is responsible for the education of children, and the parents are responsible to the state (not the children) for being effective in their PTA. Should the parents fail, the state is still obliged to provide a good education, therefore everybody’s taxes go up and the status quo is definitively eliminated from the list of valid options. Then limitations on state power and a cost-benefit analysis (not free) would determine which course of action is appropriate. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2019, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/215 "2019-07-30T16:11:00Z")
> [@steronz](#): > > We’re back to a platitude, then. “People have some degree of control over their lives, unless they don’t” is hardly a profound principle to build a political philosophy on. It’s a statement that nobody could possibly disagree with. I have avoided the parent thread specifically because I think all conservative values are platitudes. I think all liberal values are platitudes, too. We’re talking about such a large group of people that the only things everyone actually agrees on amount to tautologies which cannot possibly be disputed. > [@steronz](#): > > Let’s not pretend, though, that this simplistic way of looking at personal responsibility is how conservatives use that phrase. **Shodan** isn’t pretending. You can go for more specific definitions based on generalizations of conservative factions, but there be [DEL]dragons[/DEL] no true Scotsmen beyond this point. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2019, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/216 "2019-07-30T16:32:30Z")
> [@Scylla](#): > > To judge somebody on their personal responsibility or lack thereof is a bit of anti-stoic/personal responsibility thing to do. If presented with the opportunity to leave my (fictional) infant in the care of my normal babysitter versus a recently convicted infant abuser, although she may _say_ she is a changed person, I would most likely politely decline the convict’s offer. I follow Stoicism to the point of honoring justice, I might not even judge her character in making that decision. She isn’t necessarily giving me a lie, but I don’t care if she is lying or not. I still judge her risk as to my child based on her history. Why would I place my child, or anybody’s child, or any innocent in danger when there is a clear and just cause for concern and a safe alternative? Or in the case of a man asking for a loan from the bank, were I the loan-maker, I may evaluate his risk to the company without assuming his state of mind. If it is clear based on the record that he spends his available funds on demerit goods before turning around and defaulting on payments, I would be ill-disposed to extend credit. “I promise to timely repay my debt”, he pleads, and “that was a long time ago” or “that doesn’t reflect me now”. It makes no difference as to his character or state of mind, the fact is that he has a record of reneging on promises and wasting funds. If there is no compelling excuse by which to absolve him of his own acts, if he cannot show that he had no choice in the matter, I will not extend credit. If a man says “I will surely starve”, I am bound to refer him to some form of assistance, or provide it myself, that he does not die on my doorstep or after walking away. I would not provide cash assistance by default. If he lingers or returns I would reach out to charities, neighbors, and possibly the state for his and my relief. But this is a form of charity and to be done in a private capacity; I would support a business policy doing the same but I would not misappropriate business assets (contrary to policy) for this purpose unless the beggar was actually at risk of immediate tangible harm, in which case I would call an ambulance. I would also support public and private services for such situations (such as a soup kitchen). If these actions are contrary to Stoicism, then I am not a Stoic; I claimed to be conservative, not necessarily a Stoic. Nevertheless I believe I find support in eg: _Seneca’s letters to Lucilius_, CXII. 🙂 > [@Scylla](#): > > What I think happens is that you have people who have not needed help and are fortunate or lucky enough to have their shit together in such a way that they are ok and have always been ok. They take the fact that they have never needed help as proof of their personal responsibility. They lay claim to it and look down on people who do need help or suffer an unfortunate setback as lacking it. I believe a person is absolved of personal responsibility to the extent that they are a victim of circumstance. That should settle this particular concern; I think **Shodan** takes this view as well. > [@Scylla](#): > > When I was injured as a child my father told me that I really didn’t belong in the hospital, because it really wasn’t that bad, and it was my job to heal up and be tough and work with the doctors to the best of my ability so that they could focus on the kids that really needed the help. He told me it was my job to be the example, so that it would help the others, and to help out as much as I could. That is a powerful thought, although I think your _duty_ to be a good inspiration was derived from some other doctrine, not personal responsibility. Presumably you did not cause your own burns, or at least not the injury of other burn patients. The question is “why?” Why was it your job to be the example? You don’t need to tell me what it was, as this is a highly personal question. This line of thinking can take you to very dark places, or very bright places. That being said, if we are to separate personal responsibility from theodicy or karma, the answer is not personal responsibility. > [@Scylla](#): > > There have been plane crashes in Alaska. A single person or a couple of uninjured people don’t fare as well as say, somebody who is injured but also has to help somebody with two broken legs. If you are caring for other people, you don’t pity yourself. You don’t wallow. Unless the Alaskan planegoer felt that they _caused_ the accident (plausible), personal responsibility gives way to another doctrine. There may be an evolutionary or biologic basis for empathy which comes into play, but from a philosophical standpoint I find that argument beside the point. If there is a strong instinct there, philosophy takes a back seat and we need not debate this scenario further; if it does not, the point is probably lost. A Stoic consequentialist might take into account the greater chance of survival when caring for an injured person, but I do not see myself as a consequentialist. > [@Scylla](#): > > One of the great problems of the social safety net is that a “handout” robs them of this sense of value and worth, not to other people, but to themselves. > > I remember reading about the Japanese welfare system way way back (so I may have this wrong,) but that system demands things of its beneficiaries so that it does not rob their sense of worth (their culture is different, and I don’t think it’s directly applicable to us.) This is a strongly worded statement, but I cannot seem to connect it to the rest of your post. Either way, I cannot even consider taking a position on that debate without first resolving the aforementioned issue with dependents. ☹ ~Max ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2019, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/217 "2019-07-30T16:39:06Z")
> [@Airbeck](#): > > Is this true though? This is a common refrain from the right, but we did welfare reform already, I thought there already is a limit and the idea of a lifelong welfare leech is not really accurate anymore. Am I understanding incorrectly? Are there statistics that show this to be an increasing problem now? I’d like to see that data if this is such a huge problem in our society rather than just a cudgel being used on the right in order to slash social spending and lower their own taxes regardless of the actual reality of the situation. I don’t have statistics, but in my personal experience as an employer the hard limit on income for disability benefits, as opposed to a sliding scale or something similar, directly prevents (prevented) some employees from working a full time job. I wish the government had said, “make more than $2600 a month, and we will deduct the lesser of 100% and ((earnings - $2600)/$2400) % from your benefits”. Instead, it was something like “make $2600.01 or more in a month and you lose your disability benefits _starting that month_”. As if it weren’t bad enough to lose your benefits going forward, you lose that income for the current month that you already budgeted for. In practice this means I, the employer, get asked to take hours _off_ the time-card, and my employees who deserve a raise or promotion or extra hours decline the opportunity citing government stupidity. And it’s not just my employee(s). I’ve heard other people complain about the same problem - friends, acquantances, family, _patients_ (so many patients). The Medicare doughnut hole was (is) twice as dumb for so many more reasons. The government was (is) losing money as patients stopped taking their chronic meds and ended up in hospitals. I have a feeling that if we moved these welfare programs onto sliding scales instead of hard cut-offs, we would see enough increased productivity (read: taxes) to make up for the increased spending. That opportunity is slipping away as the boomer generation increasingly becomes too old to work in ‘retirement’. Worth a study, and should count as a plus on both sides of the isle. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2019, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/218 "2019-07-30T16:44:48Z")
For those of us in the United States, American culture is determined by the government which is defined by the Constitution. It is our collective responsibility to maintain a political philosophy that “promotes the general welfare”. That does not require specific compensation of individuals for our racist sins of the past. Specific reparations for our racist history are unnecessary and are, in many ways, harmful. We have a collective responsibility to eliminate racism and progress in such a way that legally and economically we move toward a more egalitarian society. This requires some social programs and some social engineering. Some among us will immediately claim all such moves are Socialism or Communism, which of course is not true. All wealth is created by collusion between the government and the private sector. Public policy determines whether that wealth accrues to the many or to the few. We are individually responsible to hold political philosophies that “promote the general welfare” not the welfare of some upper percentile. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2019, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/219 "2019-07-30T16:51:14Z")
> [@Scylla](#): > > I’m not sure I understand. I am thinking about those supply/demand charts from Econ 101. People own their own labor and can sell it as they see fit. If it was not a living wage, wouldn’t they go elsewhere, thus limiting supply and driving up price? First, a “living wage” varies wildly. Consider an expensive medical condition or student loans. What about dependents? All said and done, one person’s living wage can shoot up into the top 20% of incomes, and that’s my wild guess. If you don’t know how to cook, or don’t have time (working multiple low paying jobs), the food bill skyrockets or you/your kids suffer from malnutrition. And none of these are solved by declaring bankruptcy, except that you might have your kids taken away. I mean, I remember reading a story about a highly specialized surgeon who accidentally cut off his finger. Suddenly he can’t be a surgeon any more and the weight of his student loans mean he had to work multiple “normal” jobs, lost his house and kids, and barely makes his child support payments. He fell in a hole and will never get out. Closer to home there was a high school teacher who trained to be a doctor, and right near the end of his training got in a bad car accident that screwed up his body, bad. Medical complications prevented him from finishing residency. He found a job as a biology (or was it chemistry?) teacher, supplemented by a secondary job, welfare, poverty, and the (voluntary but reluctant) loss of child custody. It’s a modern story of Sisyphus, but without any sense of justice. These examples assume we have rational actors. I may have technically failed Econ 101, but people are _not_ ideal rational actors as assumed in introductory economics. Consider the following examples of economically irrational behavior: racism; sexism; political considerations; strikebreakers; crimes that fund drug addiction; having more children that you cannot afford; falling for the old $0.99 trick; consumer hysteria; indecisiveness; and short-sightedness in general. I suspect most if not all markets are and always have been heavily influenced by irrational economic behavior. Perhaps most importantly of all, most people must make important economic decisions in the dark - an entirely rational decision based on the available information can easily end up being the wrong decision. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2019, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/220 "2019-07-30T18:48:16Z")
“People own their own labor and can sell it as they see fit.” (Scylla) Surely you jest. Is that some kind of Libertarian nonsense? Certainly is single dimensional. In 2004 I was living in a small New Mexico town and consulting for companies in Si Valley, Texas and Israel. I billed $100 an hour. My Navaho friends were lucky to bill $5.00 an hour when they could find a job. I was selling fifty years of experience thru contacts I had made during that time. Do you propose that my cowboy buddy, Hector Apachito, could hitch hike to Sunnyvale CA and land a job that would even pay him enough to live there? Your economics education is wanting. Supply and demand are just 2 of the parameters that determine the compensation paid for labor. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2019, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/221 "2019-07-30T18:55:03Z")
> [@Scylla](#): > > I like you much better when you are sedated. You really don’t want to hear my back-of-the-head reaction to that line. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550.md?page=10) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550.md?page=12)