Anti-Capitalist Sentiment (with some morality)

[wufwugy]

Your notion that being unforgiving to honest, hard-working people leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

***
As someone who has taken unemployment benefits, and gone through the goddamn ringer on keeping up with their demands while learning to take advantage of the wealth of job-finding resources they had to offer, I can say that it's no easy ride for free money. There's no slacking and avoiding an active daily job search unless you commit fraud. They audit your claims to a certain extent to look for fraud.

I'm not saying people don't abuse the system. I'm certain they do.

I'm saying, in my personal experience, limited though it is, that office was filled with people using the computers and waiting in line for personal meetings with employment workers. It was a room of strained hope and desperate smiles. It was full of people trying their damndest to get back into the system, not people slacking on a free dime.

***
Without data to put this into perspective, we're just sharing anecdotes.

Here's the first 3 links on googling the phrase, "what percent of welfare is abused"
Huffington Post
ThinkProgress
wikipedia

Looks like that abuse of the system you describe amounts to ~2% of all welfare transactions.

Those economic powers can change in ways that leave a person or a region of people on the losing end of the stick. They are perfectly willing to retrain and find a new job, but they need to feed their kids while they take a few weeks to do so.

What I hope I've illustrated is how welfare does provide a safety net - one that compliments the free market.

I'm not talking about fraud or abusing the system and I said that things like unemployment insurance look good on the anecdotal level. Almost everybody who has been on welfare has benefited from it in isolation. But this has no bearing on how the system as a whole functions. Who here would not benefit if they received $5k in their bank accounts every month from the government? No one. Every individual would benefit from this greatly. But the economy as a whole would become a disaster and everybody would end up being worse off than they otherwise would be without that extra $5k. This sounds like a contradiction but it's not a contradiction and is well established consensus in macroeconomics. The unemployment insurance example was meant to illustrate part of why this is true.

I'm talking macroeconomics, and the first thing you do is call me a prick. Most of what I post here I don't make up. I just bring concepts I learn from economists to this board. If you wish to have a productive discussion, you have to assume that you have something to learn.

[MadMojoMonkey]

Almost everybody who has been on welfare has benefited from it in isolation. But this has no bearing on how the system as a whole functions.

So...
People who use it say it's great,
But
people who don't use it are hurt more than the people who use it are benefited?
Overall, it's -EV.
Is that what you're saying?

Is it enough to only consider raising the mean? Doesn't the variance matter, too?

Doesn't the fact that we're talking about providing a service that desperate people need and appreciate play a part?

I get that numbers are callous. I don't get why that means we should act callously.

***
The rest is really another non-sequitur. That terrible $5k plan is terrible.
However, it's not comparable to welfare or unemployment insurance.

the first thing you do is call me a prick.

This never happened. That's not even my kind of insult.
Now that you mention it, though, you are a tiny stab, sometimes...
almost cutting, but just grazing the surface.

(That's my kind of burn.)
;p

[wufwugy]

So...
People who use it say it's great,
But
people who don't use it are hurt more than the people who use it are benefited?
Overall, it's -EV.
Is that what you're saying?

Is it enough to only consider raising the mean? Doesn't the variance matter, too?

Doesn't the fact that we're talking about providing a service that desperate people need and appreciate play a part?

I get that numbers are callous. I don't get why that means we should act callously.

***
The rest is really another non-sequitur. That terrible $5k plan is terrible.
However, it's not comparable to welfare or unemployment insurance.

The $5k plan is perfectly comparable. Every element for why it is terrible is also present with unemployment insurance. The unemployed seeking employment are market actors just as much as the employed, and they are subject to the same elements of supply, demand, incentives, etc. When an economy is structured in such a way that the unemployed are paid for unproductive behavior, its eventual effect is that it will be more difficult for them to find productive work and when they do it will be of lower quality or for less compensation. I already went into detail for this but you swept it aside, so whatever.


Safety nets are defined as policies that help people when they lose their jobs. Unemployment insurance is this type of safety net in a vacuum, but because it decreases the productivity of overall capital, it is bad for the economy, which necessarily means it is not a real safety net when all factors are accounted for. However, an elimination of the minimum wage is a real safety net since it also "helps people when they lose their jobs" since it means there is more available work, and it increases production and the overall productivity of capital, which means that the economy is overall better, which means the probability and severity of the downtrodden is reduced, making no minimum wage a true effective safety net policy.

This never happened. That's not even my kind of insult.
Now that you mention it, though, you are a tiny stab, sometimes...
almost cutting, but just grazing the surface.

(That's my kind of burn.)
;p

I assumed you meant as much since the first thing you said is I'm being unforgiving to the down-trodden. On the contrary, the policies I propose provide that safety net that welfare doesn't. Welfare looks like it's a safety net on the surface, but when you dig deeper it does not behave as such. Market policies (like lower/no minimum wage) appear to not be safety nets on the surface, but when you dig deeper they behave as safety nets.