"welfare hurts the poor"

[DblBarrelJ]

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Anyway welfare doesn't hurt the poor. Some people use welfare in a way you don't like, but that doesn't mean it hurts them. And the European equivalent helped me and my family enormously for a brief period in my life.

(I mean enormously in the sense that a small amount of money coming in made all the difference - not that I received a lot of money).

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This is not the problem. The problem is people who stay on welfare for lifetimes. I have no problem with a person seeking welfare when they really need it. In all actuality, I'm not completely for abolishing welfare. However, I would certainly like to see a system where you were forced to meet with a caseworker every six months who had the power to cut you off, and, barring an injury/mental condition that didn't allow you to work, everyone should be cut off after 24 months, regardless of excuses.

[Golden_Rhino]

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Anyway welfare doesn't hurt the poor. Some people use welfare in a way you don't like, but that doesn't mean it hurts them. And the European equivalent helped me and my family enormously for a brief period in my life.

(I mean enormously in the sense that a small amount of money coming in made all the difference - not that I received a lot of money).

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This is not the problem. The problem is people who stay on welfare for lifetimes. I have no problem with a person seeking welfare when they really need it. In all actuality, I'm not completely for abolishing welfare. However, I would certainly like to see a system where you were forced to meet with a caseworker every six months who had the power to cut you off, and, barring an injury/mental condition that didn't allow you to work, everyone should be cut off after 24 months, regardless of excuses.

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I'm all for this. I hate that the people who legitimately need welfare have to live in poverty because there are other people who couldn't find a job for three generations. I would like to keep the welfare budget where it is, and give more to those who really need it.

[mosdef]

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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 think you're missing the point. If someone comes up to me and offers me a $10,000 to stay home from work today, I would take it and I wouldn't be worse off. But having a society wide system where resources were forcefully used to pay lot of people $10,000 to stay home from work would be destructive for everyone because it places such a drain on production. It is especially destructive for the poorest people because forcefully limiting production means forcefully limiting supply which means forcefully making prices rise.

Welfare doesn't pay $10,000 per day, but the principle is the same.

[bookish]

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Anyway welfare doesn't hurt the poor. Some people use welfare in a way you don't like, but that doesn't mean it hurts them. And the European equivalent helped me and my family enormously for a brief period in my life.



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This is not the problem. The problem is people who stay on welfare for lifetimes. I have no problem with a person seeking welfare when they really need it. In all actuality, I'm not completely for abolishing welfare. However, I would certainly like to see a system where you were forced to meet with a caseworker every six months who had the power to cut you off, and, barring an injury/mental condition that didn't allow you to work, everyone should be cut off after 24 months, regardless of excuses.

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I'm all for this. I hate that the people who legitimately need welfare have to live in poverty because there are other people who couldn't find a job for three generations. I would like to keep the welfare budget where it is, and give more to those who really need it.

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OK I'll give a bit of background to my experiences.

I used to earn a decent salary, on which I was comfortable financially. Some people would say I earned a lot, some wouldn't. My company went under and I couldn't find a new job so I claimed benefits whilst I was searching for a new job (about 3/4 months). The money allowed me to keep my house, and feed my family as my wife didn't work at the time as we had a newborn baby. It was a grim time.

I retrained as a teacher, and received further money whilst I retrained as the salary wasn't very high.

(As it happens I discovered I wasn't a very good teacher and left after a year to return to my previous career).

I guess I am what the welfare system was designed for. It acted as a safety net between jobs and whilst I retrained, and before and after I was/am a 'productive' member of society and I certainly have no intention of claiming benefits again before I claim my pension.

Two things occur to me.
1: Whenever people talk about cutting benefits I think back to this time and the help the money gave me. Living on benefits is barely an existence. There's nothing to do, and what there is to do costs money you don't have (this was before internet poker days!)

2: Surprisingly perhaps I have more sympathy with the long-term unemployed than previously. I can't imagine living on such little money for anything other than the minimum amount of time possible. In my experience those people on long-term benefits have a variety of problems such as mental or physical illnesses, lack of education, lack of social skills, drug or other dependency problems and they are not out of work because they are bone-idle, but because they just can't get a job and in many cases have given up trying.
Whilst quite liking some of the people I've met who have been on long-term benefit, I wouldn't employ any of them and I'm not sure who would. They have a whole host of problems in their lives, but receiving money from the state to live on is not one of them.

[mosdef]

You have pointed out many benefits to having a robust insurance system, and for participating in an insurance program. But there is a difference between a "risk protection scheme funded by participant premiums" like disability insurance, and a "everyone is entitled to a minimum standard of living regardless of their decision making scheme funded by everyone else" like welfare insurance.

[Kirkland]

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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).

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You are correct that people who take welfare are acting in their own best interest, that it is the correct decision for them. However, this is not what is meant when ACists say welfare hurts the poor. The way welfare hurts the poor is by changing their incentives in a way that it is sometimes better to choose not to get a job, not to save money, etc., whereas if there were no "safety net", their incentives would be to protect themselves in different ways, by securing a steady income, preparing for rough times, and generally being a better member of society.

The ACists might say welfare "forces" the poor to make bad decisions, but I don't think it's that clear cut. Someone who is smart enough to realize all of this might choose to be worse-off short term, and not accept welfare, and build a better life for themselves. However, there is a correlation between being poor and being dumb, so the ACists would get rid of welfare in order to force the dumb-poor to take responsibility for their own lives.

[bookish]

Yes there is a difference. In one case we as a society say we look after each other and in the other we don't.

In an insurance scheme those people who really need the cover - the poor, and those in insecure employment - will be those to whom cover is either too expensive or unavailable.

[Money2Burn]

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I also saw first hand the number of able bodied, otherwise intelligent people who absolutely refused to work because they never saw the need to.


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This pretty much sums up what I was trying to get at through my tired haze, but I suck at teh interwebs, and articulating my thoughts in general.

I saw this same thing growing up, I was fortunate to not have been on the system, but I grew up in a very poor area and it seemed that more people who were on welfare just refused to work rather than were actually on it as a last resort. This is where my initial dislike for the welfare system came from.

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Most people will not starve to death before they become productive members of society, and those that do I have no sympathy for.


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Barring some sort of mental disorder or physical injury that would prevent a person from being productive, I completely agree with this.

[Barretboy]

I suppose this all goes back to whether or not you believe that the government 'owes' you something.

[Money2Burn]

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In my experience those people on long-term benefits have a variety of problems such as mental or physical illnesses, lack of education, lack of social skills, drug or other dependency problems and they are not out of work because they are bone-idle, but because they just can't get a job and in many cases have given up trying.

...I wouldn't employ any of them and I'm not sure who would.

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Most migrant workers I've been around fit this description perfectly, except they weren't on welfare. There are very few people who actually are incapable of being valuable to someone.