Sarcasm is not the answer to anything you’ve posted.
You’re the one demolishing the system. You solve it.
You’re perfectly free to complain and not leave.
Here is one potential application of my theory that I believe applies to this situation.
In Canada, we have something call Employment Insurance. Without getting into the 100% accurate details, it is a “tax” on your paycheck, that if you get laid off provides temporary salary.
Expand this a bit: A person with a job pays a small premium for “income insurance.” If he loses his job for a reason other than his own doing, he can collect. Similar to disability insurance. And it’s scaled to income; low salary job very low premium.
Step back and think about how the premium would change with jobs–high risk of layoffs means high premiums, high risk of employer bankruptcy higher premiums.
I know this has been hashed out before, but there are factors when choosing a job other than just salary. Under something like this people end up being discouraged from “high risk” jobs (cough Ford cough).
It is a self provided safety net, thus negating the need for a chunk of the welfare benefits.
I think disability insurance would take care of another chunk.
And single-payer health care eliminates another chunk.
The next question that I can’t answer is, “why are people on welfare?” If you give me reason, we can work backwards.
I hate having to say this, but check out I think my apple rebuttals to see another possible answer.
We do have this. It’s called unemployment benefits. It works almost exactly like that. It’s paid for by the taxes paid by everyone, to the potential benefit of everyone, garbage men and CEO’s alike. Receiving these benefits is dependent on being able to prove that you’re actively looking for work, and even if you fail to find work, they run out eventually. People are still out of work. In order to work there must be jobs for them to be hired to, which is a function of the overall economy, which I am neither prepared or are willing to get into. See how things get massively complicated by reality?
I’m not seeing how this is different than what we already have via the government, except that by moving it into the private sector you get all the worst aspects of private health insurance: an incentive on the part of insurers to collect your premiums while you’re employed, then screw you when you’re laid off (rescission); higher premiums overall because a large portion of people with secure jobs think they don’t need income insurance, thus shrinking the pool of premiums collected; and people in high turnover jobs, unable to find more stable work, being denied coverage because they’re obviously high risk, when they’re the people who need it most.
Well, regardless of the reasons, I’m prepared to accept that some percentage of the population will always be on welfare, until we get replicator technology or something else that radically modifies economics as we know it. It’s probably cheaper and easier to keep them on the rolls (while providing opportunities for the more determined among them to climb out) than to try to devise various strategies to “teach them responsibility” (whatever that entails) and force them off.
The 50million currently on welfare represent 50million reasons.
But there is basically 1 reason they stay on it: income cut offs.
If you’ll permit me to not be 100% accurate, I need to use loose numbers to show what I’m talking about.
If a person is making $19k a year and qualifies for Medicaid, but gets cut off at $20k, they have zero incentive to earn more money.
To earn an extra $1000 will cost them their Medicaid, meaning they’ll have to pay more than $1000 for medical coverage. So a person making $19k that gets a $1000 raise ends up making less than they started.
From the small amount of work I’ve done with low income earners though a charity, I’m sorry to make this a personal analogy, but through that work, the director of the program explained to me that every “social safety net” has an income cut off.
So the person making $19k a year also qualifies for all kinds of other programs depending on their area. Might be things like day care, food stamps, section 8 or subsidized housing, bus passes, discounts on their utility bills. Plus they are afforded a myriad of protections such as not having their power cut off in winter, rules regarding how they can be evicted. These benefits are all location specific. All of these things individually seemed like a great way for the wealthy to help alleviate the suffering of those less fortunate.
The result is that a person making $19k a year could be receiving as much as $10,000 worth of benefits, that all get cut the second their income goes up. So in order to be “better off” they have to get from $19k a year to well over $30k a year, if they miss that mark, they end up worse off.
They also get fucked up if they get married, this part I didn’t understand as well, but the way I understand it is that they end up having “combined” income making it look like their household makes $38k so they BOTH lose all those benefits. So the system also discourages marriage.
That is the potential downside to the current system of what is supposed to help lower income earners (poor people). I’m not entirely convinced my system would be worse.
Not sure what you been smoking man but I suspect it is the pages out of an Ayn Rand book.
I never said any such thing. What you just described is communism.
What actually happens is the government says it will take 20% from every citizen. Yes, we have progressive taxation but we also have regressive taxation and as I already cited it happens that the tax burden on all citizens is actually pretty close from one to the next. For the sake of ease in the discussion I’ll just pretend the government takes 20% from each citizen.
Now, you took exception to it being a percentage. So my apple example was to illustrate what you were suggesting. If you were suggesting something else then feel free to spell it out.
If the Appletopia government emulated the United States tax system then Appletopis would take 20% from each person. So, orchard owner would pay 200 apples and worker would pay 0.4 apples. I say this seems pretty fair. You disagree.
So what are the alternatives? Take an equal amount from each one? Try to discern what portion of “services” each uses and essentially charge each for that?
Not sure how the second could remotely work in a practical sense.
Also remember the Appletopia government has a budget of 200 apples per year. Under this system they just run in the green. If you divide it evenly and say they both need to pay 100 apples you have a big problem. Can’t get blood from a stone and the Appletopia government will be running seriously in the red and will soon go bankrupt which is not in anyone’s interest.
So, please spell out the system you envision as the most fair while providing the necessary funds to maintain a government and all its services (even minimized such as police, fire, roads, military).
What is your system?
Are you suggesting a world where the only people who can have children are those who can prove a certain income?
What happens to people who can support their children and then through no fault of their own go bankrupt (maybe hurricane Katrina blows up their business). Take the kids away?
You know the current president of the United States came from a poor mother?
Your world would be a very scary one.
Couple of points, Canada changed it to “Employment Insurance” because it had a better right.
I don’t think I’d personally advocate the system Canada uses, one interesting aspect of it is that it’s personalized in that it’s something you pay into, and then draw from. So it works more like insurance instead of a welfare style hand out.
My version does not have to be provided by private insurance, I think the government is great at providing insurance (see single payer health care).
That second post is scary and so very true.
But I kind of liked the thought of premiums being based on risk. I like the idea of having people be personally attentive to their risk of being layed off. Effectively, what we’re doing is forcing people to save the 3 months salary our parents were supposed to us to have.
Any way, point is, that is a potential application of a user pay system designed to then cover people when bad things happen. Each individual person pays a small premium to be covered should they lose their job.
And it’s fair because those that earn less, pay less, and receive less. Those that earn more, pay more, and receive more. Everyone benefits equally in their status of life.
emarknight:
Look man I gotta walk away from this. I’ve spent a solid couple of days following this and I’m fairly certain, like Bryan a few pages back, no one could disagree I’ve made an honest and sincere effort to flesh this out with you, but it’s clear that we’re not getting anywhere at this point. I’ve gone to great effort to make my position crystal clear and that’s all I can do. This has degenerated into a parade of straw men created by almost everyone involved and we’re never going to come to any kind of mutual agreement so I’m gonna let it go.
I applaud and honestly appreciate your passion and enthusiasm for this, and though I believe you wrong, I wish you luck in your endeavors to make this come to fruition, no matter how low the odds on that I believe exist. I say without sarcasm that I enjoyed discussing this with you; hopefully we can cross swords on some other subject in the future.
To those of you who will inevitably continue this debate, I wish you luck. I’m out.
Peace!
I remain impressed and amused by your $52000 burglary computation, if I may say.
I dunno, to me it looked like a lot of accusations of using strawmen, mostly from emac, and mostly demonstrating that he was incorrectly using the term to describe any argument that pointed out how implausible his ideas were.
My world? Your world is based on apples? What is someone supposed to do if they are allergic?!
You made a really bad analogy, so I played along and sent back three. Nothing in your analogy makes any sense.
But if you do in fact live in Appletopia I can tell you exactly what your problem is:
Don’t have a budget of 200 apples a year, if 50% of your population only earns 2 apples a year. Is it 50%? 1 guy has 1000, 1 guy has 2, and there are 8 people.
Don’t have a budget of 200 apples a year, if 87.5% of your population earns less than 2 apples a year.
Also remember, if Appeltopia is anything like the US, your 200 a year budget is based on a 198 apple deficit. Oh yes, I went there.
Oh thank god, I had no idea this was going to get to 9 pages. And now I’m debating in apples.
Masterful work on the burglary numbers.
I think I too will walk away. Maybe find a nice small country I try this out on.
It is merely a super-simplified example to clarify things. Get rid of the smoke and mirrors. I have asked you to spell out your idea of an ideal system and provided you with an absurdly simplified economy to illustrate it. Once we get the notion with the oversimplified economy we can walk it forward to the more real and vastly more complex economy of the US. Others have asked for your idea of a proper tax system as well. You remain evasive on this.
As for what the budget ought to be perhaps the orchard owner needed a dam built so he could irrigate his crops. He also needed roads built to ship his apples to market. He needs a power plant built to run his sorting and packing machinery. Not cheap stuff.
Do the workers benefit from the dam and roads and electricity? Sure but nowhere near the extent the orchard owner does yet you maintain him paying more apples is unfair.
Forget it, Mole. It’s Whinatown.
You know the oddest thing about compiling that information - did anyone else find it a little strange that a prosecuting attorney makes only $4,000 more than a patrolman and $13,000 less than a detective?
I was in no way evasive. The most descriptive version of what you want is copied below from post #364 Your super-simplified example did nothing to clarify things. Next time, ask for a super simple example before trying to offer your own made up one based on your own preconceptions.
Please note I’m not answering you because your points are valid, I’m answering you because I don’t want you to repeat this same mistake in a future thread.
If the farmer needs a damn/irrigation, well, first he shouldn’t be trying to plant an apple orchard where apples don’t grow. that is the first, and well only rule of growing apples.
Notice that a normal orchard has roads on the private land, who pays for those? The orchard owner.
You’re right, those are not cheap things. Outside of Applemania they are called the cost of operating a business. Notice that he needed the apple sorter, did the government pay for those? He needs baskets, he needs clothes. Wouldn’t it just be easier if the government ran the orchard and gave people as many apples as they need?
Running a business is expensive, how much government involvement and tax revenue are you planning to spend on this guy’s operation? Noting that it is an orchard built in a desert, with no feasible means of getting his apples to his suppliers.
All of the things you described represent the shittiest business man in the world, but you feel that the government should use the apples from successful farmers to get a road, power, and water to this guy’s failed farm? I bet he thought he got a great deal on that plot of land.
Even worse, you’re willing to use other people’s apple to build this guy a damn and irrigation system that is going to DESTROY all the upstream and downstream successful farms.
You want to use other people’s apples to build him a power plant that’s going to kill coal miners, pollute the air and water (further destroying down stream farms), and cause respiratory problems for the workers. We’re going to need more apples to pay for that too.
If this guy thinks he needs those things, let him form a business plan, pitch it to investors and and let them risk their apples. If investors want nothing to do with an apple orchard isolated in the desert, neither should the government.
Next your going to tell me that the government needs to put in price controls and subsidize apples, in order to justify this massive government investment.
No, the workers are poisoned by the coal plant, causing deformities in their children. Their land was confiscated by the government to flood the reservoir. (oh weird I just described China) And the new road by-passed the little town so all the shops have lost their business.
Here is my post from a few pages back. Careful not to trip on the funding issue of the library expansion.
On examination, I’m not sure why you think an “Attorney Advisor General” would be prosecuting cases. The role is actually filled by Crown Attorneys, who do pretty well.