"welfare hurts the poor"

[AlexM]

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Or they could just say "Are you [censored] serious, no I'm not going to steal other people's money and give it to you."

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FYP

It's not about not wanting to pay for it, it's about not forcing others to. I can fully support welfare and be willing to pay my share of it, but it's still immoral for me to use the government's military might to force others to support my desires.

[vhawk01]

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Or they could just say "Are you [censored] serious, no I'm not going to steal other people's money and give it to you."

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FYP

It's not about not wanting to pay for it, it's about not forcing others to. I can fully support welfare and be willing to pay my share of it, but it's still immoral for me to use the government's military might to force others to support my desires.

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Good point, oversight on my part.

[valenzuela]

I kinda lost track of the discussion in my last post, the zoo example was awful.
I think I get the thing now.
You guys are saying that welfare is +EV for poor ppl but it still doesnt accomplish what their supporters say it does.

[BCPVP]

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Even if I concede that welfare doesnt help the poor escape from poverty you are still arbitrarily saying that the poor guy goal should be "escaping from poverty".

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No, I'm not saying anything of the sort. I'm saying that IF the person's end is to escape poverty, then the means of living the rest of his life on welfare will not fulfill that end. Nothing more. If his end is to do as little work as he can to get by because he has a high time preference (or whatever), then welfare is a logical mean to fulfill that end. Mises thought that as an economist, one can only criticize means, not ends. I don't agree with him on that and I think that living life just doing the minimum to scrap by is a stupid thing to do, but I don't go around trying to force lazy bums to shape up. THAT would be paternalistic, which is why moorobot's charge of paternalism by libertarians doesn't hold any water. No libertarian that I've seen here has tried to argue that poor people should be deprived from receiving handouts. In fact, I often help pack up supplemental groceries at my church's pantry to give to those in need. Many libertarians do object to being coerced to fund a handout and it makes no sense to call objecting to someone stealing your money for whatever scheme they have "paternalistic".

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And btw moorobot never ever said anything about escaping from poverty on his OP, so I dont know where that arbitrary goal that poor people should have in their lives came from

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True, but that is most likely what libertarians are referring to when they say things like "welfare hurts the poor". There's a word for misrepresenting someone else's position, though like Boro, I don't think mooro did it intentionally.

[vhawk01]

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I kinda lost track of the discussion in my last post, the zoo example was awful.
I think I get the thing now.
You guys are saying that welfare is +EV for poor ppl but it still doesnt accomplish what their supporters say it does.

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No, I'm saying it sure could be +EV using some definitions of +EV. Anything could be. It just isn't +EV using the definitions that the people who support welfare are using. We can incentivise just about anything enough to make doing that thing +EV. If you gave me a million dollars to punch myself in the balls, it would clearly be +EV. But if you called this program "vhawk presidential fitness program" and intended to use it to improve my cardiovascular fitness, I'd have to say it was not "helping" me.

[valenzuela]

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I kinda lost track of the discussion in my last post, the zoo example was awful.
I think I get the thing now.
You guys are saying that welfare is +EV for poor ppl but it still doesnt accomplish what their supporters say it does.

[/ QUOTE ]

No, I'm saying it sure could be +EV using some definitions of +EV. Anything could be. It just isn't +EV using the definitions that the people who support welfare are using. We can incentivise just about anything enough to make doing that thing +EV. If you gave me a million dollars to punch myself in the balls, it would clearly be +EV. But if you called this program "vhawk presidential fitness program" and intended to use it to improve my cardiovascular fitness, I'd have to say it was not "helping" me.

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I see where this is coming from, let me guess the american welfare system is called " war on poverty" and aparently people on the welfare system are still on poverty( btw arent libertarians supposed to disagree with arbitrary poverty lines [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] )

[Borodog]

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I kinda lost track of the discussion in my last post, the zoo example was awful.
I think I get the thing now.
You guys are saying that welfare is +EV for poor ppl but it still doesnt accomplish what their supporters say it does.

[/ QUOTE ]

No, I'm saying it sure could be +EV using some definitions of +EV. Anything could be. It just isn't +EV using the definitions that the people who support welfare are using. We can incentivise just about anything enough to make doing that thing +EV. If you gave me a million dollars to punch myself in the balls, it would clearly be +EV. But if you called this program "vhawk presidential fitness program" and intended to use it to improve my cardiovascular fitness, I'd have to say it was not "helping" me.

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AHAHAHAHAHA.

You are on a [censored] ROLL tonight dude.

[nietzreznor]

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The view that "welfare hurts the poor" is inconsistent with the way in which many if not most libertarians view human action. In this view of human action, people attempt to better there own states of affairs; they are self-interested in this way. This view is often invoked to argue against certain laws regulating the market.

However, the view that welfare makes the poor worse off contradicts this premise about human beings; to say that they would be better off without welfare when they choose to be on welfare as opposed to other alternatives which they do not choose but could would be to deny that human beings seek to better there own states of affairs.

If they would really be better off without welfare they wouldn't take welfare when given the option but would do all the things you would say they would do if there were no welfare (for example, prepare better, save more, work more etc) even though they have the option of going on welfare; in other words, if it were true that welfare hurt the poor, they would avoid taking welfare because "welfare hurts the poor" (i.e. them).

Revealed preference theory demonstrates that people on welfare would not be better off without welfare. Unless, of course, you wish to make the paternalist claim that you know the interest of individuals better that those individuals know their own interest.

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I haven't read any replies, but here's my thoughts:

1. I think that welfare CAN be beneficial to the poor, in the sense that in our current society a poor person will often be better off accepting available welfare than not doing so. But this is in part because other better options (i.e., besides taking welfare and being poor, or not taking welfare and being extra-poor) is denied to many by government law and regulation. So I think that welfare is helpful to some in our current society, but in general would be harmful to the poor in the long run in a free society.

2. The fact that a person might choose to accept welfare doesn't show that it is 'in a person's best interest', only that the person thinks it is in their best interest. (Similarly, although a person who smokes reveals that they find smoking in their best interest, it doesn't follow that smoking actually is in their best interest).

Ignoring the irony of you, of all people, claiming that libertarians are paternalistic, I don't find the claim that X might better know what is in Y's best interest terribly paternalistic. A doctor knows what is in the interest of my health far better than I do, and there is nothing paternalistic about that. What is paternalistic is making laws or regulations around the idea that someone else knows my interests better than me.