I was thinking about a marginally related fact. As you may know, the birth rate in Italy is worringly low.
So, in order to boost it Berlusconi, the current Italian Prime Minister pledged to pay 1000 Euros to families for each newborn child. Prodi, the opposition PM candidate for the April general elections, upped the stake promising to pay 2500 Euro/year for each child, from 0 to 18 yrs.
Now I was thinking, why do not implement tax cuts instead of government handouts? The sum would be the same, but without all the bureaucracy. And those billions of Euro are not generated out of thin air, but come from the pockets of the already heavily taxed Italians.
However, the low birth rate is another cultural problem; most families could already afford to raise 3 or 4 children (with some sacrifices) instead of 2. But they do not want to, for a variety of reasons - also legit ones.
I agree that there must be a change in our culture (as a country) in order to fix the problems you've discussed arising from the Welfare State. So, what do you (or anyone out there) think will be sufficient to bring about such a huge change in outlook? I often find the situation to be quite bleak when I consider the very small changes in people's attitudes 4.5 years after 9/11/01.
Do you think it will take a social calamity to realign people's attitudes (and hence our culture) regarding Welfare, or will incremental change be sufficient?
thus insisting from the beginning that: A) my argument has little merit, and B) his argument is the only persuasive one of the two to those with a truly "open mind."
While I do indeed believe (A), I never implicitly or explicitly assert (B). What I do assert is that the burden of proof is on you, since you're the one arguing against the status quo, and that you've come nowhere close to holding up that burden.
I don't claim that my argument is "persuasive" -- in fact, I'm not making an argument at all; I'm merely pointing up problems with your argument. I explicitly state that "my objective here is not to prove to anybody that the social safety net is working or that it presents no burden to those it purports to help — that’s for someone else to do some other time." Hardly the same thing as me saying that my way is the only way.
Mr. Girsch is, after all, one of the Anointed.
Uh, you're reading a shitload into my post that isn't there. But okay. If I ever make the claim that "my" way is the only way, feel free to smack me around on that claim. But I see no need to make it up if I don't provide you with that particular softball.
I made no such attribution. I said that blacks and Hispanics suffer poverty at about the same level. No mention was made of where.
You're kidding, right? From the beginning, you've been arguing that violent crime primarily involved inner-city black youth. From here, you argued that poverty can't be the primary factor involved in this dynamic because Hispanics are roughly as poor as blacks, but nowhere near as violent. So while you're right that you didn't make the attribution, your argument did rest in part on that assumption, whether or not you realized it.
"The poverty rate for Hispanics did not differ statistically from the rate for African Americans."
Apparently, this statment does not mean what you think it means. The "poverty rate" for a particular group is the number of people in that group who live below the poverty line. It says nothing about how far below the line they are. Which is the point I was making. You took "their conclusion" to mean something that it did not mean.
Um, Mr. Girsch, in a society in which welfare benefits are available to any and all who qualify, why are blacks deepest in poverty?
Now we're arguing in circles. I've already addressed this, way back in the original thread on Uncle's site. Because the cycle of poverty is difficult (though not impossible) to break, and because until just one generation ago, blacks were essentially forced into deep poverty by highly discriminatory policies which singled them out -- a fact you do not dispute. This is not the type of problem that fixes itself overnight, or even in a generation or two.
Further, it's because welfare alone cannot bring one out of poverty; it can only lessen the impact of poverty. But this is where I admit one of my assumptions comes into play: that things would be even worse for the poorest of the poor without welfare. But that introduces another dynamic into the picture, one which you've briefly touched on: education. Can't get a decent job without a decent education; can't get a decent education in the inner city, even if you wanted to, because nobody wants to fund "failing" inner city schools. Again, another debate for another time.
I should note, however, that you repeatedly assert that "CULTURE" is a factor here, and that in large part I agree. Where we disagree is not that culture drives it, but why and how it does so. You seem to think that the culture drives the poverty, and I think it's more the other way around. You seem to think that the existence of welfare is a much bigger factor in this culture problem than I do.
But here's the kicker: even if I were to grant you (just for the sake of argument) that welfare hurts more than it helps, it's still only (by your own admission, and from the Gospel According to Dalrymple) a minor factor, which means we've got much bigger fish to fry. If you were to look at the highest-impact things we could do to correct these problems, I'd bet eliminating welfare wouldn't even show up in the top five.
Since most of the rest of what you write rests on the flawed premises I described above (and, to a lesser extent, misrepresentations or misinterpretations of my objections), I don't see much point in engaging it further. There's really not much point in debating articles of faith (including, if it makes you feel better, mine).
'They’re poor because they’ve been taught that the State will take care of them, cradle to (early) grave, no muss, no fuss, no effort.'
What I didn't add was and they're receptive to that message. This is true for our black underclass, and it's true for the white British underclass. Move out of the inner city? Why? You might lose your benefits. You'll have to find a new place to live. Everyone you know lives where you do. Everyone you know thinks like you do.
There's been no pressure to do anything different. The culture doesn't impose any, and other cultures? Screw 'em. Why care what they think? You're a victim. It's the responsibility of the government to take care of you.
It's what you've been taught. It's what you believe.
And it's killing your sons at a prodigious rate."
... is the most succinct statement of the situation that I've ever read. Bravo!
2) Mencken's statement ...
"The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods."
... is what I've been saying for decades. Politicians are elected because they are electable and not for any other reason. Once they are elected, they act as they do for THEIR reasons, not yours, and not mine.
As I read more, I think we're not only talking past each other, but that I'm totally missing your point. The Welfare state is bad, but we shouldn't dismantle it?
And I'm utterly flabberghasted at your repeated attempts to characterize me as someone who is intellectually incapable of conceiving that any idea I support could be wrong, or even flawed in any way. The weather might be nice in False DilemmaVille, but I don't live there.
"I should note, however, that you repeatedly assert that "CULTURE" is a factor here, and that in large part I agree. Where we disagree is not that culture drives it, but why and how it does so. You seem to think that the culture drives the poverty, and I think it's more the other way around. You seem to think that the existence of welfare is a much bigger factor in this culture problem than I do."
Go read http://www.city-journal.org/printable.php?id=1695, where you'll find a report of a very illustrative incident. Here it is:
"A welfare mother, screaming at New York mayor John Lindsay (responsible for much of the city's rise in welfare cases), expressed the system's new philosophy: "It's my job to have kids, Mr. Mayor, and your job to take care of them." It was a philosophy that bred an urban underclass of non-working single mothers and fatherless children, condemned to intergenerational poverty, despite the trillions spent to help them."
Poverty led to the government's response, which was to hand out money, and the response of the recipients has been to expect it, demand it, and to continue to do what it takes to not jeopardize their eligibility for it. In this case, Kevin's explanation of cause-and-effect fits the observed phenomona much better than yours. Self-interest is an extremely powerful motivator, especially when viewed in the short term.
DJ, I referenced The Myth of the Working Poor in Culture, I believe.
Tgirsch:
Yes, I believe we're talking past each other. It has to do with the fact that we look at the world in vastly different ways, and have prejudices against people who say certain things. In your case, stating that taxing people because otherwise they'd just "piss the extra money away" puts you in my "Anointed" classification - you obviously know what's best for other people. You've accepted that other people are too stupid to take care of themselves, and that it's obviously the job of the Government to do it for them.
A lot of baggage goes along with being a member of The Anointed, some - perhaps most - of which you may not deserve.
But I believe you read what I wrote concerning how The Welfare State has affected blacks and leapt to a bunch of conclusions yourself.
For example, our crime problem is an inner-city crime problem. Who lives in the inner city? Poverty-stricken blacks. But your assertion (and the assertion of many of The Anointed) is that it's poverty that causes crime. The Census Bureau says that blacks and Hispanics suffer similar levels of poverty. Your cite says no, blacks are actually much poorer than poverty-stricken Hispanics. What's the difference? The Hispanics don't (in general) live in the inner cities.
So, is it poverty, or is it the culture that makes blacks stay in the inner cities? Other groups are poor and don't have astronomical murder rates. Other groups live in the inner city and don't have astronomical murder rates. And why do blacks remain the poorest? Because their culture encourages them to stay put and collect their entitlement checks. There is no pressure to GET OUT. That pressure exists in most cultures, perhaps most strongly in Asian ones, but it has apparently been beaten out of the black culture.
The statistics seem to indicate that in the 1950's blacks were beginning to improve their lot - until the advent of The Welfare State.
You think things would be worse without The Welfare State. I think things would have improved, or at least be no worse than they are today. Certainly we'd still have poor, but how many? How poor? That's admittedly indeterminate. But at least our Federal budget wouldn't be two-thirds entitlement programs.
That's OK with you, though - "We can afford it."
What's the difference between our Weltanschauungs? One apparently is that I think blacks as a group are as capable of pulling themselves out of poverty as any other culture if given an incentive to do so.
You apparently don't.
As far as The Welfare State being bad, yes it is. I see it like a tumor. We're far past the point where we can simply cut it out. That might very well be fatal. If it's to be removed, it will require chemo, radiation, AND surgery. It will be slow, painful, and inherently dangerous. And perhaps the best we can hope for is to keep it from getting any bigger.
Remember, this entire exchange began over a discussion of gun control. Welfare is a side issue to me.
The price of our "social safety net" has been, in my humble opinion, no improvement in poverty rates
Except that the data I show says otherwise. Look again. While African-Americans are still poor at a disproportionately high rate, the poverty rate among African-Americans has been steadily declining, from 36.7% having a household income below $15,000 (2001 dollars) in 1972, to 26.4% in 2001 -- a 28% decline! If a "steady decline" means the same thing as "no improvement," then we're probably speaking a different language. Given this, if your assumptions are true, the "welfare state" is slowing, but not preventing, their emergence from poverty. And if my assumptions are true, it's actually helping. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
"if your assumptions are true, the "welfare state" is slowing, but not preventing, their emergence from poverty."
That is correct. The welfare state, in combination with the culture of inner-city blacks is slowing their emergence from poverty. "No improvement" was a poor choice of words.
Well put, quite appropriate, and I have thus preached to others for a long time. I offered the anecdote as illustration only, but I didn't say so. I see now that I should have. I'll be more careful and explicit in the future.
Kevin:
[Quote]In your case, stating that taxing people because otherwise they'd just "piss the extra money away" puts you in my "Anointed" classification - you obviously know what's best for other people. You've accepted that other people are too stupid to take care of themselves, and that it's obviously the job of the Government to do it for them.[/Quote]
The problem here is I think that this both misstates and oversimplifies my actual position. Admittedly, this is in large part because of sloppy phrasing on my part, which I have since recanted. You, however, have continued to insist that the reason I phrased it that way is because it's what I really meant, all my protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.
We form societies for many reasons, one of which is to look out for each other -- to take care of the "common good," as it were. One can argue that some things that are done in the name of the common good are actually detrimental to it, and I think that's what you're attempting here, even if not convincingly to me. But to argue (as many Libertarians seem to) that we should be primarily concerned with ourselves, and that the problems of others aren't also to some extent our problems is to attack the very idea of society.
A social safety net is needed not because "I'm" smarter than "them," but because we, collectively, have more knowlege and experience than we do individually. And we know, from experience, that some people are going to be left behind -- many, yes, through their own fault, but many because of circumstances beyond their control.
Many of us (apparently not you) feel that it is in our collective best interest to create a system in which mistakes or bad fortune don't necessarily lead directly to ruin. I'd venture to say most of us feel that way (your readers notwithstanding). Further, we generally feel that requiring everyone to help pay for such a system is fundamentally no different than requiring everyone to help pay for our common defense, or for fire and police, or for roads, or for schools, or whatever. In all of these cases, either directly or indirectly, virtually everyone benefits.
Could we do a better job providing such a system than we do today? This is the first part of where you and I differ -- since you believe the whole underlying idea is fundamentally flawed, you seem to believe that it cannot be done any better. Further, you seem to believe it would be better to do nothing at all, whereas I believe that would be short-sighted and, in the long term, disastrous.
All that said, it's a far, far cry from me saying "you're too stupid to manage your own money," no matter how hard you try to spin it that way.
[Quote]But your assertion (and the assertion of many of The Anointed) is that it's poverty that causes crime.[/Quote]
I don't know that I'd put it quite that strongly. On the whole, poverty is more tightly correlated with crime than any other single factor, but as we all know, correlation does not necessarily imply causation. It could be coincidental (though I doubt it), or (more likely) it could be that some other factor tends to cause both poverty and crime.
Even absent clear causation, however, it seems to stand to reason that minimizing poverty is the single biggest thing we could do to reduce crime. And honestly, if I believed reducing or eliminating the "welfare state" would have the effect of dramatically reducing poverty, I'd be fully on board with that.
[Quote]The Census Bureau says that blacks and Hispanics suffer similar levels of poverty.[/Quote]
See, words have meanings, and that is not at all what the Census Bureau says. What they say is that blacks and Hispanics live below the poverty line in similar proportions. It says nothing about their relative "levels" of poverty. It would be like making broad generalizations about "the rich" without differentiating between the guy that makes $300,000 per year and the guy who makes $10 million per year. They're both, after all, "rich."
[Quote]So, is it poverty, or is it the culture that makes blacks stay in the inner cities?[/Quote]
In a word, yes. It's both of those things, and a myriad of other things, many of them external. Look, for example, and the number of people -- overwhelmingly minorities -- who were unable to evacuate New Orleans in advance of Katrina. I'm not talking about the ones who declined to do so; I'm talking about the ones who couldn't do so -- the ones who rely wholly on public transit to get places. How are they supposed to take your easy way out and "choose" to live out in rural areas, as the Hispanics do? And that's just one factor.
The bigger thing here, I think, is that you're trying to take an extremely complex socio-economic problem and oversimplify it. To your credit, you're acknowledging more complexity than most do, but you're still way oversimplifying it.
[Quote]Other groups are poor and don't have astronomical murder rates[/Quote]
No, but there are a couple of things going on here. For one, it's a lot easier to have "astronomical" murder rates when you're talking about higher population densities than when you're talking about lower ones. For another, as our Kevin T. Keith points out, the racial differences in crime rates all but disappear unless you focus in very narrowly -- as you have -- on murder specifically.
That there is such a large disparity for that one crime, murder, is undoubtedly culturally driven. On that, at least, we can agree. But attempts to tie that somehow to the "welfare state" fall flat, in my opinion, unless and until you can demonstrate that inner city black youth are disproportionally impacted by the "welfare state" at a rate comparable to the disproportionate rate at which they kill one another.
[Quote]What's the difference? The Hispanics don't (in general) live in the inner cities.[/Quote]
Let me know when the seat belt sign turns off, indicating that the goal posts have reached a full and complete stop. :) Seriously, though, you seem to be arguing in circles here. Best I can figure, this reasoning shows that the culture isn't responsible for poor, inner-city blacks being disproportionately violent, but for poor blacks disproportionately living in the inner-city (where all poor residents are more violent).
[Quote]The statistics seem to indicate that in the 1950's blacks were beginning to improve their lot - until the advent of The Welfare State.[/Quote]
Why "until?" You speak as if improvements stopped wit the advent of "The Welfare State," but as I've already demonstrated, African-Americans as a group are continuing to improve their lot.
[Quote]You think things would be worse without The Welfare State. I think things would have improved, or at least be no worse than they are today.[/Quote]
You say that, but have provided nothing apart from a few anecdotes to actually demonstrate it. Where you have provided hard numbers, I've shown that they don't say what you seem to think they say, and that they aren't nearly as convincing as you seem to think they are.
In other words, that "The Welfare State" does more harm than good is an article of faith. Evidence that the plight of the poor actually has improved, albeit slowly, doesn't fit that model, so it's ignored, or dismissed with some unsubstantiated statement about how it would be even better without it.
[Quote]But at least our Federal budget wouldn't be two-thirds entitlement programs.[/Quote]
Actually, at the very worst, it's just over half, and that's only if you wholly ignore the ongoing cost of the Iraq conflict, and count all mandatory budget proposals as "entitlement" programs. It would be substantially less if, for example, we allowed Medicare to use its tremendous market power to negotiate for lower prices (currently prohibited).
[Quote]One apparently is that I think blacks as a group are as capable of pulling themselves out of poverty as any other culture if given an incentive to do so. ... You apparently don't.[/Quote]
Who's playing the race card now? Until now, the discussion was going on just fine without implicit or explicit allegations of racism (notwithstanding my early joke which you misinterpreted). Now you had to go ruin it. ;)
For what it's worth, I think they're every bit as capable as anyone else; but I also think that as a group, they're starting at a substantial disadvantage, through no fault of their own -- in large part because of the very history of abuse that you yourself acknowledge. It seems that you would simply ignore this disadvantaged starting position, and hope it magically goes away. It's like telling them, as a group, "We created this problem for you, but we have no responsibility for helping you fix it."
It is here that I disagree. I agree with Dr. King, who said "Whenever the issue of compensatory treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he should ask nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic," and, "A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for the Negro."
Much of the evidence shows that longer-term, Dr. King supported a corrective system based not upon race, but upon economic class. I agree that such a system would be both better than what we do now, and far better than just pretending the problem doesn't exist.
[Quote]Remember, this entire exchange began over a discussion of gun control. Welfare is a side issue to me.[/Quote]
Somehow the tail end of my comment got eaten. The rest:
[Quote]Remember, this entire exchange began over a discussion of gun control. Welfare is a side issue to me.[/Quote]
More accurately, this entire exchange began over your complete misunderstanding of my position on gun control. :) I don't recall ever arguing that gun control would result in lower crime rates (and I'm pretty sure I've argued quite the opposite). Your only beef with me was that I had the audacity to point out that guns are generally more widely available in inner cities than they are elsewhere (in particular, as compared with other nations).
Of course, it stands to reason that if we could wave a magic wand and make the guns go away (while changing nothing else about the culture), there would be fewer murders, because killing people -- especially at a distance -- would be a great deal harder. But I've never argued that gun control constitutes any such magic wand, nor even that it would move us in that direction. Again, I doubt it would have any such effect.
So on gun control, at least with respect to me, you've been attacking a straw man.
[Quote]The welfare state, in combination with the culture of inner-city blacks is slowing their emergence from poverty.[/Quote]
Again, though, this is mostly an article of faith. You've provided no compelling evidence that this is actually so; just some anecdotes and a bunch of numbers that don't lead to anything like that conclusion.
Just look at the comments here, which are roughly divided into two categories: "Amen, and thank you for articulating what I already believed"; and me, saying "not so fast." (To be fair, that's vastly superior to my comment section, which consists largely of crickets chirping.)
We're now well upwards of 10,000 words spilled on the subject, and neither of us has managed to change anyone's mind, even a little bit.
[Also, as a side note, what's with this habit that right-wing and Libertarian "intelligentsia"-bashers feeling the need to show off their superior intellect by using big German words that have ordinary English meanings? I suppose it beats Oddly-Spelled Jeff's habit of translating sophomoric insults into foreign languages... ]
"Your only beef with me was that I had the audacity to point out that guns are generally more widely available in inner cities than they are elsewhere (in particular, as compared with other nations)."
Umm, bullshit. Country folk the world over are the ones who own the lions' share of guns. In nations with an asinine "need" requirement, they can demonstrate "need", and they are more isolated from nosy police anyway (or do you think every farmer in the world with a shotgun has a license?).
The countryside all over is awash with guns, but the crime problems are urban? Hmmm... CULTURE, perhaps?
Tgirsch, I thought we were through with the discussion? ;-) That was quite the essay - and an example of why I prefer blog posts to trying to write essay-length comments.
There's a lot there. Hopefully I'll be able to respond in kind this weekend, but let me comment on this:
"Further, we generally feel that requiring everyone to help pay for such a system is fundamentally no different than requiring everyone to help pay for our common defense, or for fire and police, or for roads, or for schools, or whatever. In all of these cases, either directly or indirectly, virtually everyone benefits."
Until the Ponzi scheme comes crashing down. The problem with entitlement programs, as with most government programs, is that they never get smaller, ("If a little is good, more is better!") and sooner or later the tax burded required to sustain them crushes the economy.
The "social safety net" was not and should not be a function of government, but it became one. And now it's two-thirds of our entire Federal budget, and growing. What effects that's had on all cultures is something I think we ought to be studying, because I don't think they were all beneficial.
As an aside, I believe "Hubris" is Greek in origin, not German.;-)
tgirsch, there is a considerable difference between a "social safety net" and "government supplied and taxpayer supported sponsorship of parasitism". I favor the former, I abhor the latter. What grates on my nerves like fingernails on a blackboard is when someone states that, because I do not like the latter, then I think the former should not be attempted.
So, I take great exception to your comment:
"And we know, from experience, that some people are going to be left behind -- many, yes, through their own fault, but many because of circumstances beyond their control.
Many of us (apparently not you) feel that it is in our collective best interest to create a system in which mistakes or bad fortune don't necessarily lead directly to ruin. I'd venture to say most of us feel that way (your readers notwithstanding)."
This reader does feel that way. Mistakes and bad fortune are one kind of thing, but intentional parasitism is another.
You wrote of Kevin:
"Could we do a better job providing such a system than we do today? This is the first part of where you and I differ -- since you believe the whole underlying idea is fundamentally flawed, you seem to believe that it cannot be done any better. Further, you seem to believe it would be better to do nothing at all, whereas I believe that would be short-sighted and, in the long term, disastrous."
I don't read that in Kevin's writings. It seems to me that he has excercised considerable patient skill in trying to convey the overwhelming effect that government support of parasitism has had on our society.
What I don't see in his writings is condemnation of a safety net. What I don't see in your writings is condemnation of government sponsored parasitism.
Between my writing my last comment and posting it, Kevin posted his comment. Apparently he is not in favor of any government sponsored "safety net". I stand corrected.
Kevin, the amazing thing about the original Ponzi scam was that people continued to invest in it even after they knew what it was and that it was doomed to fail. The parallel with government handouts is amazing.
If I remember correctly, the U.S. is no longer a "pure" welfare state. In 1994, the government started a welfare-to-work program in order to reduce the dependency on welfare. It is believed that by some that this program that has started a slight downward decline in the poverty rate in the U.S.
Point taken, and this is why I try to avoid gun control debates. If you're careless and use imprecise terminology, people will pounce on that and there can be no meaningful debate. I should have said handguns, and more specifically that America has a lot more of those than most other places.
But this is the problem with gun nuttery: there's absolutely no room for a moderate point of view, and anyone who dares to utter anything that challenges then Gun Nut Talking Points is to be ridiculed and disposed of as quickly as possible. Thank you for illustrating that.
Then again, I suppose you're right. A country guy who lives half a mile from his neighbor is every bit as likely as someone in a densely-populated urban area to encounter a situation where gun violence becomes likely; and that if we could wave a magic wand and make all the handguns in the city disappear, stabbings would replace shooting murders at an exactly 1-to-1 ratio. Thanks for clearing that up. :)
Kevin: Until the Ponzi scheme comes crashing down. The problem with entitlement programs, as with most government programs, is that they never get smaller, ("If a little is good, more is better!") and sooner or later the tax burded required to sustain them crushes the economy.
Except that exactly the same thing applies to a consumer-driven economy. Growth is required, and as soon as growth stops, the whole thing comes crashing down. So you've essentially just made capitalism disappear in a puff of logic. :)
As a side note, social security doesn't require growth at all; what it does require (and won't ever have) is a relatively stable ratio between current workers and current beneficiaries. At the program's inception, that ratio was something like 16:1, but it's currently only something like 2.5:1 -- had the ratio held at 16:1 (and had both parties not consistently raided the money earmarked for the program), we wouldn't have this program.
In this sense, referring to Social Security as a "Ponzi scheme" seems a wee bit hyperbolic to me. And I'm not the only one who thinks so.
The "social safety net" was not and should not be a function of government, but it became one.
Because that worked so well during the great depression, I can see why people would hearken back to those days.
And now it's two-thirds of our entire Federal budget, and growing.
Just because a number is incorrect doesn't mean it souldn't be repeated, after all. Where's Brian to rip your head off and crap down your neck (or at least call "bullshit") on that? :) C'mon, Brian, chop chop!
As an aside, I believe "Hubris" is Greek in origin, not German.
Whatever, egghead. :) I'll engage that when you come down from your ivory tower of intelligentsia and speak like the common folk. ;) (Seriously, I knew Hubris wasn't German; I was referring to Weltanshauung.)
We in the "reality-based" community can see the pyramid collapse coming, but we're also aware that the population is loath to do anything about it.
Oh, I get it. We're smart and they're dumb is off-limits for me, but A-OK for you. It's a good thing we've got you to look out for those peasants who can't see what you in the "reality-based" community can see. Perhaps you've been "anointed" after all! :)
DJ: This reader does feel that way. Mistakes and bad fortune are one kind of thing, but intentional parasitism is another.
Which roughly puts you in the category of "we still need to do something, just differently" that Kevin disparages. The whole idea of a safety net is, he argues, fundamentally flawed.
Truth to tell, I'd be willing to talk about a great number of reforms to various social service programs. As I've already alluded, Medicare is a bloated cow that I'd bet could be cut in half or less, even without booting anyone off its doles.
Social Security could be substantially cut by transforming it from its current role as a near-universal pension plan to more of a need-based safety net. More modestly, we could incent people (through tax breaks or other means) to opt-out of receiving benefits, if they don't really need them. That way, you're not screwing anyone. You could also do other things like increase the retirement age and slow the growth of benefits to reduce the strain on the system, although these last would admittedly only delay problems, not eliminate them.
From a cold, calculating perspective (and no, I'm not advocating this!) a massive baby boomer "die-off" would also pretty much do the trick.
I remember that English single mother with three daughters aged 12, 14 and 16. When all of them got pregnant (yes, also the 12yo one) and the fathers ran away, the mother said "Frankly, I blame the schools".
No, it requires growth. How many industries out there thrive without growth? Suppose, for example, people completely stopped buying new houses. That is, no growth in the housing industry. What do you suppose happens? The impact on the economy isn't pretty.
I like you because you engage. I like you because you're intelligent and willing to defend your position without getting (too) snarky. I like you because you apparenly have a sense of humor (I knew you meant "Weltanschauung", I was just giggin' ya).
I like you because you're a challenge.
I have little expectation of swaying your position, or you mine, but I like the mental exercise. You're a worthy opponent.
We have vastly different worldviews. Those views color how we think, and how we perceive things. Hopefully I'll get a post out of it this weekend, or maybe next. After all, you took a full week to respond, I should have the same option.
And, as for the "two-thirds of the federal budget" - mea culpa. It's onlyhalf. But it's heading for two-thirds in the not-so-distant future.
We spent more than a trillion dollars ($1,000,000,000,000) on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in the 2004 ($2.2 trillion) budget year.
So, my apologies. Half, not two-thirds. Pardon the hell out of me! ;-)
"How many industries out there thrive without growth?"
Counting them is more than a mite silly, but a few examples will suffice to illustrate the concept. Remember that your statement originated with comments about a "consumer driven economy". So, how about a few consumer driven industries that thrive without growing?
Some that come to mind are industries that deliver what people consume. They continue to produce products and services which the people continue to consume, because people will continue to consume regardless of whether or not the population grows and regardless of whether or not the industry grows. Thus, growth is irrelevant to their continuing prosperity.
Some examples:
providing groceries
providing natural gas
providing electricity
providing water
repairing automobiles
making movies
skiing
golfing
farming
It's a tiny list and it's not complete, but you should see the point. It illustrates a simple concept. There are industries that produce, day after day after day, products and services that people consume. They prosper, make money, and provide jobs, day after day after day, by being efficient, not by getting bigger.
The housing construction industry is not one of them. It services a growing population, without which it would die.
A supermarket, on the other hand, does not depend on the growth of itself or of the population to survive. It can stay successful continuously without it growing and without the population growing. It thrives by being efficient, as evidenced by its razor-thin profit margins. It doesn't have to grow to be successful, it just has to work, and it does.
OK, now I get it. I thought maybe you liked me because I suggested a massive boomer die-off. :)
And, as for the "two-thirds of the federal budget" - mea culpa. It's only half.
Then there should be no need to exaggerate. :)
Pardon the hell out of me!
I'm afraid if I did that, I might be branded an "activist judge." :)
DJ:
I think you vastly underestimate just how important growing demand is to the profitability of those industries you mention. Without growth, many of those industries would indeed survive, but they most certainly would not thrive.
Skiing and golfing are particularly good examples here, because they require people to have disposable income, something far fewer would actually have absent a growth economy.
Just so you know, I wasn't exaggerating. I was quoting sites that were in error. I was simply wrong. When you pointed out the error, I did further research for the facts.
Once again, a comment thread isn't the best place to make one's point.
"Except that exactly the same thing applies to a consumer-driven economy. Growth is required, and as soon as growth stops, the whole thing comes crashing down."
That is clear and plain English. The ink's dry. To paraphrase, industries in a consumer-driven economy come "crashing down" if their growth stops.
Your example of such an industry, namely the housing construction industry, is a very poor one. It is not "consumer-driven" -- its products are not "consumed".
Your subsequent question
"How many industries out there thrive without growth?"
is itself a bit silly. "Thrive" means "to grow vigorously", and so "thriving" without "growing" is self-contradictory.
And so, my use of the word "thrive" by providing examples of industries that "thrive without growing" was equally in error. "Thrive" was not the correct word. I meant them as examples of industries that continue to operate, at a profit, without growing. Mea culpa.
Now, to business.
It is irrelevant how, as you put it, "important growing demand is to the profitability of those industries" that I cited. The question is not whether they benefit from growth, nor is it whether they desire growth. The question is whether or not they require growth to survive, i.e. whether or not they come "crashing down" if they do not grow.
No, they don't. They might want growth and they might benefit from growth, but they do not require it to survive and they do not require it to be profitable. They do not come "crashing down" without it.
To illustrate, consider one example, namely the grocery industry, a bit more carefully. I have a good friend, a high school classmate of my younger brother, who has been in the business more than thirty years. He is a produce specialist with a major grocery chain. He tells me the industry depends on stability, efficiency, and good planning, not on growth. A quarterly profit margin of 1.75% is viewed as grounds for joyous celebration. That is not the viewpoint of a "growth" oriented business. Their success depends on people continuing to eat, not on people making more people.
Now, go back to your original statement. It was not simply that growth is a good and desirable thing, rather it was that growth is indispensable to survival in a consumer-driven economy. It ain't. Survival in a consumer-driven economy depends on consumption, not growth, and profitability depends on efficiency, not growth.
Beats me how it happened, but my browser put "tgirsch" in the "name" field of the last comment before I posted it. I had typed "DJ" there -- I remember typing it.
Damned if I know how it happened. I sure as hell didn't type it there.
We're getting into economic wonkishness, but I think we'll have to agree to disagree. For one thing, "thrive" is the correct word, if you use the "prosper/be successful" sense of the word (Def 1). Although "propser" probably would have been a better word.
In any case, I stand by my original statement, because it doesn't refer to specific segments of the economy, but to the economy as a whole. Profitability ultimately requires strong demand for a product or service, and there's no driver of demand quite like growth. Without growth, demand in many industries would flag (in the "drop/become limp" sense), and that would require those industries to downsize -- which means people out of work, with less disposable income, which means even less demand. You see where this is going.
Bottom line is, capitalism does very well as long as there's growth (in particular, steady, sustainable growth), and not so well if there isn't.
"Except that exactly the same thing applies to a consumer-driven economy. Growth is required, and as soon as growth stops, the whole thing comes crashing down."
Your statement was about "a consumer-driven economy". Now you're changing your tune to consider "the economy as a whole". The former is abstract, the latter is not.
Your statement was that "as soon as growth stops, the whole thing comes crashing down". That is unequivocal, and it's dead wrong. Our "economy as a whole" has had periods without growth, some of them quite long in duration and some of them quite deep. They are called "recessions", and during them the whole thing did not come crashing down. The economy did not "crash" and the non-existent crash did not start "as soon as" growth stopped.
Your statement is demonstrably false but you won't admit it. I do see where you're going. You don't see that you ain't getting there. You're trying to weasel out of your own words and it won't work.
All this adds up to is a clash between people who WANT to or see nothing wrong with imposing their "worldview", which is some kind of philosophy, on others and those that do not.
Guess which side the social safety net is on. Guess which side welfarists are on. They are one and the same.
Its black and white. One side is correct in its approach to life on earth and the other is not. One assumes human beings are individuals and entitled to seek out their lives as they choose and the other assumes some are entitled to things that others produce. For one side there is metaphysical justification. For the other there is none. No amount of rationalizations will change that or make the wrong side right.
Once again, I applaud your tenacity and patience in debating these issues over and over again.
I don't bother, anymore.
Private enterprise, mostly, works. State enterprise, mostly, fails.
We could argue the nuts and bolts forever, but the immutable reality is that statism will eventually doom a society.
And don't even get me started on gun control...
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I was thinking about a marginally related fact. As you may know, the birth rate in Italy is worringly low.
So, in order to boost it Berlusconi, the current Italian Prime Minister pledged to pay 1000 Euros to families for each newborn child. Prodi, the opposition PM candidate for the April general elections, upped the stake promising to pay 2500 Euro/year for each child, from 0 to 18 yrs.
Now I was thinking, why do not implement tax cuts instead of government handouts? The sum would be the same, but without all the bureaucracy. And those billions of Euro are not generated out of thin air, but come from the pockets of the already heavily taxed Italians.
However, the low birth rate is another cultural problem; most families could already afford to raise 3 or 4 children (with some sacrifices) instead of 2. But they do not want to, for a variety of reasons - also legit ones.
I agree that there must be a change in our culture (as a country) in order to fix the problems you've discussed arising from the Welfare State. So, what do you (or anyone out there) think will be sufficient to bring about such a huge change in outlook? I often find the situation to be quite bleak when I consider the very small changes in people's attitudes 4.5 years after 9/11/01.
Do you think it will take a social calamity to realign people's attitudes (and hence our culture) regarding Welfare, or will incremental change be sufficient?
HellifIknow, Tom. I'm not one of the Anointed.
>>I'm not one of the Anointed.
We can fix that, you know. I can dig my shamanic robes out of the attic, find some oil, (probably hoppe's) and bless it.
Yup, we can get you annointed tout suite. ;)
I'm pretty sure it's a do-it-yourself thing, Geek.
Kevin:
Just a few brief points, and I'm done:
thus insisting from the beginning that: A) my argument has little merit, and B) his argument is the only persuasive one of the two to those with a truly "open mind."
While I do indeed believe (A), I never implicitly or explicitly assert (B). What I do assert is that the burden of proof is on you, since you're the one arguing against the status quo, and that you've come nowhere close to holding up that burden.
I don't claim that my argument is "persuasive" -- in fact, I'm not making an argument at all; I'm merely pointing up problems with your argument. I explicitly state that "my objective here is not to prove to anybody that the social safety net is working or that it presents no burden to those it purports to help — that’s for someone else to do some other time." Hardly the same thing as me saying that my way is the only way.
Mr. Girsch is, after all, one of the Anointed.
Uh, you're reading a shitload into my post that isn't there. But okay. If I ever make the claim that "my" way is the only way, feel free to smack me around on that claim. But I see no need to make it up if I don't provide you with that particular softball.
I made no such attribution. I said that blacks and Hispanics suffer poverty at about the same level. No mention was made of where.
You're kidding, right? From the beginning, you've been arguing that violent crime primarily involved inner-city black youth. From here, you argued that poverty can't be the primary factor involved in this dynamic because Hispanics are roughly as poor as blacks, but nowhere near as violent. So while you're right that you didn't make the attribution, your argument did rest in part on that assumption, whether or not you realized it.
"The poverty rate for Hispanics did not differ statistically from the rate for African Americans."
Apparently, this statment does not mean what you think it means. The "poverty rate" for a particular group is the number of people in that group who live below the poverty line. It says nothing about how far below the line they are. Which is the point I was making. You took "their conclusion" to mean something that it did not mean.
Um, Mr. Girsch, in a society in which welfare benefits are available to any and all who qualify, why are blacks deepest in poverty?
Now we're arguing in circles. I've already addressed this, way back in the original thread on Uncle's site. Because the cycle of poverty is difficult (though not impossible) to break, and because until just one generation ago, blacks were essentially forced into deep poverty by highly discriminatory policies which singled them out -- a fact you do not dispute. This is not the type of problem that fixes itself overnight, or even in a generation or two.
Further, it's because welfare alone cannot bring one out of poverty; it can only lessen the impact of poverty. But this is where I admit one of my assumptions comes into play: that things would be even worse for the poorest of the poor without welfare. But that introduces another dynamic into the picture, one which you've briefly touched on: education. Can't get a decent job without a decent education; can't get a decent education in the inner city, even if you wanted to, because nobody wants to fund "failing" inner city schools. Again, another debate for another time.
I should note, however, that you repeatedly assert that "CULTURE" is a factor here, and that in large part I agree. Where we disagree is not that culture drives it, but why and how it does so. You seem to think that the culture drives the poverty, and I think it's more the other way around. You seem to think that the existence of welfare is a much bigger factor in this culture problem than I do.
But here's the kicker: even if I were to grant you (just for the sake of argument) that welfare hurts more than it helps, it's still only (by your own admission, and from the Gospel According to Dalrymple) a minor factor, which means we've got much bigger fish to fry. If you were to look at the highest-impact things we could do to correct these problems, I'd bet eliminating welfare wouldn't even show up in the top five.
Since most of the rest of what you write rests on the flawed premises I described above (and, to a lesser extent, misrepresentations or misinterpretations of my objections), I don't see much point in engaging it further. There's really not much point in debating articles of faith (including, if it makes you feel better, mine).
Game, set, match, and medal, Kevin.
Two comments:
1) Your statement ...
"I said, very early on in this discussion,
'They’re poor because they’ve been taught that the State will take care of them, cradle to (early) grave, no muss, no fuss, no effort.'
What I didn't add was and they're receptive to that message. This is true for our black underclass, and it's true for the white British underclass. Move out of the inner city? Why? You might lose your benefits. You'll have to find a new place to live. Everyone you know lives where you do. Everyone you know thinks like you do.
There's been no pressure to do anything different. The culture doesn't impose any, and other cultures? Screw 'em. Why care what they think? You're a victim. It's the responsibility of the government to take care of you.
It's what you've been taught. It's what you believe.
And it's killing your sons at a prodigious rate."
... is the most succinct statement of the situation that I've ever read. Bravo!
2) Mencken's statement ...
"The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods."
... is what I've been saying for decades. Politicians are elected because they are electable and not for any other reason. Once they are elected, they act as they do for THEIR reasons, not yours, and not mine.
As I read more, I think we're not only talking past each other, but that I'm totally missing your point. The Welfare state is bad, but we shouldn't dismantle it?
And I'm utterly flabberghasted at your repeated attempts to characterize me as someone who is intellectually incapable of conceiving that any idea I support could be wrong, or even flawed in any way. The weather might be nice in False DilemmaVille, but I don't live there.
tgirsch, you wrote:
"I should note, however, that you repeatedly assert that "CULTURE" is a factor here, and that in large part I agree. Where we disagree is not that culture drives it, but why and how it does so. You seem to think that the culture drives the poverty, and I think it's more the other way around. You seem to think that the existence of welfare is a much bigger factor in this culture problem than I do."
Go read http://www.city-journal.org/printable.php?id=1695, where you'll find a report of a very illustrative incident. Here it is:
"A welfare mother, screaming at New York mayor John Lindsay (responsible for much of the city's rise in welfare cases), expressed the system's new philosophy: "It's my job to have kids, Mr. Mayor, and your job to take care of them." It was a philosophy that bred an urban underclass of non-working single mothers and fatherless children, condemned to intergenerational poverty, despite the trillions spent to help them."
Poverty led to the government's response, which was to hand out money, and the response of the recipients has been to expect it, demand it, and to continue to do what it takes to not jeopardize their eligibility for it. In this case, Kevin's explanation of cause-and-effect fits the observed phenomona much better than yours. Self-interest is an extremely powerful motivator, especially when viewed in the short term.
DJ, I referenced The Myth of the Working Poor in Culture, I believe.
Tgirsch:
Yes, I believe we're talking past each other. It has to do with the fact that we look at the world in vastly different ways, and have prejudices against people who say certain things. In your case, stating that taxing people because otherwise they'd just "piss the extra money away" puts you in my "Anointed" classification - you obviously know what's best for other people. You've accepted that other people are too stupid to take care of themselves, and that it's obviously the job of the Government to do it for them.
A lot of baggage goes along with being a member of The Anointed, some - perhaps most - of which you may not deserve.
But I believe you read what I wrote concerning how The Welfare State has affected blacks and leapt to a bunch of conclusions yourself.
For example, our crime problem is an inner-city crime problem. Who lives in the inner city? Poverty-stricken blacks. But your assertion (and the assertion of many of The Anointed) is that it's poverty that causes crime. The Census Bureau says that blacks and Hispanics suffer similar levels of poverty. Your cite says no, blacks are actually much poorer than poverty-stricken Hispanics. What's the difference? The Hispanics don't (in general) live in the inner cities.
So, is it poverty, or is it the culture that makes blacks stay in the inner cities? Other groups are poor and don't have astronomical murder rates. Other groups live in the inner city and don't have astronomical murder rates. And why do blacks remain the poorest? Because their culture encourages them to stay put and collect their entitlement checks. There is no pressure to GET OUT. That pressure exists in most cultures, perhaps most strongly in Asian ones, but it has apparently been beaten out of the black culture.
The statistics seem to indicate that in the 1950's blacks were beginning to improve their lot - until the advent of The Welfare State.
You think things would be worse without The Welfare State. I think things would have improved, or at least be no worse than they are today. Certainly we'd still have poor, but how many? How poor? That's admittedly indeterminate. But at least our Federal budget wouldn't be two-thirds entitlement programs.
That's OK with you, though - "We can afford it."
What's the difference between our Weltanschauungs? One apparently is that I think blacks as a group are as capable of pulling themselves out of poverty as any other culture if given an incentive to do so.
You apparently don't.
As far as The Welfare State being bad, yes it is. I see it like a tumor. We're far past the point where we can simply cut it out. That might very well be fatal. If it's to be removed, it will require chemo, radiation, AND surgery. It will be slow, painful, and inherently dangerous. And perhaps the best we can hope for is to keep it from getting any bigger.
Remember, this entire exchange began over a discussion of gun control. Welfare is a side issue to me.
DJ:
The plural of anecdote is not data. :)
Kevin:
One more thing I feel important to note. You say:
The price of our "social safety net" has been, in my humble opinion, no improvement in poverty rates
Except that the data I show says otherwise. Look again. While African-Americans are still poor at a disproportionately high rate, the poverty rate among African-Americans has been steadily declining, from 36.7% having a household income below $15,000 (2001 dollars) in 1972, to 26.4% in 2001 -- a 28% decline! If a "steady decline" means the same thing as "no improvement," then we're probably speaking a different language. Given this, if your assumptions are true, the "welfare state" is slowing, but not preventing, their emergence from poverty. And if my assumptions are true, it's actually helping. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
"if your assumptions are true, the "welfare state" is slowing, but not preventing, their emergence from poverty."
That is correct. The welfare state, in combination with the culture of inner-city blacks is slowing their emergence from poverty. "No improvement" was a poor choice of words.
tgirsh:
"The plural of anecdote is not data."
Well put, quite appropriate, and I have thus preached to others for a long time. I offered the anecdote as illustration only, but I didn't say so. I see now that I should have. I'll be more careful and explicit in the future.
Kevin:
[Quote]In your case, stating that taxing people because otherwise they'd just "piss the extra money away" puts you in my "Anointed" classification - you obviously know what's best for other people. You've accepted that other people are too stupid to take care of themselves, and that it's obviously the job of the Government to do it for them.[/Quote]
The problem here is I think that this both misstates and oversimplifies my actual position. Admittedly, this is in large part because of sloppy phrasing on my part, which I have since recanted. You, however, have continued to insist that the reason I phrased it that way is because it's what I really meant, all my protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.
We form societies for many reasons, one of which is to look out for each other -- to take care of the "common good," as it were. One can argue that some things that are done in the name of the common good are actually detrimental to it, and I think that's what you're attempting here, even if not convincingly to me. But to argue (as many Libertarians seem to) that we should be primarily concerned with ourselves, and that the problems of others aren't also to some extent our problems is to attack the very idea of society.
A social safety net is needed not because "I'm" smarter than "them," but because we, collectively, have more knowlege and experience than we do individually. And we know, from experience, that some people are going to be left behind -- many, yes, through their own fault, but many because of circumstances beyond their control.
Many of us (apparently not you) feel that it is in our collective best interest to create a system in which mistakes or bad fortune don't necessarily lead directly to ruin. I'd venture to say most of us feel that way (your readers notwithstanding). Further, we generally feel that requiring everyone to help pay for such a system is fundamentally no different than requiring everyone to help pay for our common defense, or for fire and police, or for roads, or for schools, or whatever. In all of these cases, either directly or indirectly, virtually everyone benefits.
Could we do a better job providing such a system than we do today? This is the first part of where you and I differ -- since you believe the whole underlying idea is fundamentally flawed, you seem to believe that it cannot be done any better. Further, you seem to believe it would be better to do nothing at all, whereas I believe that would be short-sighted and, in the long term, disastrous.
All that said, it's a far, far cry from me saying "you're too stupid to manage your own money," no matter how hard you try to spin it that way.
[Quote]But your assertion (and the assertion of many of The Anointed) is that it's poverty that causes crime.[/Quote]
I don't know that I'd put it quite that strongly. On the whole, poverty is more tightly correlated with crime than any other single factor, but as we all know, correlation does not necessarily imply causation. It could be coincidental (though I doubt it), or (more likely) it could be that some other factor tends to cause both poverty and crime.
Even absent clear causation, however, it seems to stand to reason that minimizing poverty is the single biggest thing we could do to reduce crime. And honestly, if I believed reducing or eliminating the "welfare state" would have the effect of dramatically reducing poverty, I'd be fully on board with that.
[Quote]The Census Bureau says that blacks and Hispanics suffer similar levels of poverty.[/Quote]
See, words have meanings, and that is not at all what the Census Bureau says. What they say is that blacks and Hispanics live below the poverty line in similar proportions. It says nothing about their relative "levels" of poverty. It would be like making broad generalizations about "the rich" without differentiating between the guy that makes $300,000 per year and the guy who makes $10 million per year. They're both, after all, "rich."
[Quote]So, is it poverty, or is it the culture that makes blacks stay in the inner cities?[/Quote]
In a word, yes. It's both of those things, and a myriad of other things, many of them external. Look, for example, and the number of people -- overwhelmingly minorities -- who were unable to evacuate New Orleans in advance of Katrina. I'm not talking about the ones who declined to do so; I'm talking about the ones who couldn't do so -- the ones who rely wholly on public transit to get places. How are they supposed to take your easy way out and "choose" to live out in rural areas, as the Hispanics do? And that's just one factor.
The bigger thing here, I think, is that you're trying to take an extremely complex socio-economic problem and oversimplify it. To your credit, you're acknowledging more complexity than most do, but you're still way oversimplifying it.
[Quote]Other groups are poor and don't have astronomical murder rates[/Quote]
No, but there are a couple of things going on here. For one, it's a lot easier to have "astronomical" murder rates when you're talking about higher population densities than when you're talking about lower ones. For another, as our Kevin T. Keith points out, the racial differences in crime rates all but disappear unless you focus in very narrowly -- as you have -- on murder specifically.
That there is such a large disparity for that one crime, murder, is undoubtedly culturally driven. On that, at least, we can agree. But attempts to tie that somehow to the "welfare state" fall flat, in my opinion, unless and until you can demonstrate that inner city black youth are disproportionally impacted by the "welfare state" at a rate comparable to the disproportionate rate at which they kill one another.
[Quote]What's the difference? The Hispanics don't (in general) live in the inner cities.[/Quote]
Let me know when the seat belt sign turns off, indicating that the goal posts have reached a full and complete stop. :) Seriously, though, you seem to be arguing in circles here. Best I can figure, this reasoning shows that the culture isn't responsible for poor, inner-city blacks being disproportionately violent, but for poor blacks disproportionately living in the inner-city (where all poor residents are more violent).
[Quote]The statistics seem to indicate that in the 1950's blacks were beginning to improve their lot - until the advent of The Welfare State.[/Quote]
Why "until?" You speak as if improvements stopped wit the advent of "The Welfare State," but as I've already demonstrated, African-Americans as a group are continuing to improve their lot.
[Quote]You think things would be worse without The Welfare State. I think things would have improved, or at least be no worse than they are today.[/Quote]
You say that, but have provided nothing apart from a few anecdotes to actually demonstrate it. Where you have provided hard numbers, I've shown that they don't say what you seem to think they say, and that they aren't nearly as convincing as you seem to think they are.
In other words, that "The Welfare State" does more harm than good is an article of faith. Evidence that the plight of the poor actually has improved, albeit slowly, doesn't fit that model, so it's ignored, or dismissed with some unsubstantiated statement about how it would be even better without it.
[Quote]But at least our Federal budget wouldn't be two-thirds entitlement programs.[/Quote]
Actually, at the very worst, it's just over half, and that's only if you wholly ignore the ongoing cost of the Iraq conflict, and count all mandatory budget proposals as "entitlement" programs. It would be substantially less if, for example, we allowed Medicare to use its tremendous market power to negotiate for lower prices (currently prohibited).
[Quote]One apparently is that I think blacks as a group are as capable of pulling themselves out of poverty as any other culture if given an incentive to do so. ... You apparently don't.[/Quote]
Who's playing the race card now? Until now, the discussion was going on just fine without implicit or explicit allegations of racism (notwithstanding my early joke which you misinterpreted). Now you had to go ruin it. ;)
For what it's worth, I think they're every bit as capable as anyone else; but I also think that as a group, they're starting at a substantial disadvantage, through no fault of their own -- in large part because of the very history of abuse that you yourself acknowledge. It seems that you would simply ignore this disadvantaged starting position, and hope it magically goes away. It's like telling them, as a group, "We created this problem for you, but we have no responsibility for helping you fix it."
It is here that I disagree. I agree with Dr. King, who said "Whenever the issue of compensatory treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he should ask nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic," and, "A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for the Negro."
Much of the evidence shows that longer-term, Dr. King supported a corrective system based not upon race, but upon economic class. I agree that such a system would be both better than what we do now, and far better than just pretending the problem doesn't exist.
[Quote]Remember, this entire exchange began over a discussion of gun control. Welfare is a side issue to me.[/Quote]
Somehow the tail end of my comment got eaten. The rest:
[Quote]Remember, this entire exchange began over a discussion of gun control. Welfare is a side issue to me.[/Quote]
More accurately, this entire exchange began over your complete misunderstanding of my position on gun control. :) I don't recall ever arguing that gun control would result in lower crime rates (and I'm pretty sure I've argued quite the opposite). Your only beef with me was that I had the audacity to point out that guns are generally more widely available in inner cities than they are elsewhere (in particular, as compared with other nations).
Of course, it stands to reason that if we could wave a magic wand and make the guns go away (while changing nothing else about the culture), there would be fewer murders, because killing people -- especially at a distance -- would be a great deal harder. But I've never argued that gun control constitutes any such magic wand, nor even that it would move us in that direction. Again, I doubt it would have any such effect.
So on gun control, at least with respect to me, you've been attacking a straw man.
[Quote]The welfare state, in combination with the culture of inner-city blacks is slowing their emergence from poverty.[/Quote]
Again, though, this is mostly an article of faith. You've provided no compelling evidence that this is actually so; just some anecdotes and a bunch of numbers that don't lead to anything like that conclusion.
Just look at the comments here, which are roughly divided into two categories: "Amen, and thank you for articulating what I already believed"; and me, saying "not so fast." (To be fair, that's vastly superior to my comment section, which consists largely of crickets chirping.)
We're now well upwards of 10,000 words spilled on the subject, and neither of us has managed to change anyone's mind, even a little bit.
[Also, as a side note, what's with this habit that right-wing and Libertarian "intelligentsia"-bashers feeling the need to show off their superior intellect by using big German words that have ordinary English meanings? I suppose it beats Oddly-Spelled Jeff's habit of translating sophomoric insults into foreign languages... ]
"Your only beef with me was that I had the audacity to point out that guns are generally more widely available in inner cities than they are elsewhere (in particular, as compared with other nations)."
Umm, bullshit. Country folk the world over are the ones who own the lions' share of guns. In nations with an asinine "need" requirement, they can demonstrate "need", and they are more isolated from nosy police anyway (or do you think every farmer in the world with a shotgun has a license?).
The countryside all over is awash with guns, but the crime problems are urban? Hmmm... CULTURE, perhaps?
Tgirsch, I thought we were through with the discussion? ;-) That was quite the essay - and an example of why I prefer blog posts to trying to write essay-length comments.
There's a lot there. Hopefully I'll be able to respond in kind this weekend, but let me comment on this:
"Further, we generally feel that requiring everyone to help pay for such a system is fundamentally no different than requiring everyone to help pay for our common defense, or for fire and police, or for roads, or for schools, or whatever. In all of these cases, either directly or indirectly, virtually everyone benefits."
Until the Ponzi scheme comes crashing down. The problem with entitlement programs, as with most government programs, is that they never get smaller, ("If a little is good, more is better!") and sooner or later the tax burded required to sustain them crushes the economy.
The "social safety net" was not and should not be a function of government, but it became one. And now it's two-thirds of our entire Federal budget, and growing. What effects that's had on all cultures is something I think we ought to be studying, because I don't think they were all beneficial.
As an aside, I believe "Hubris" is Greek in origin, not German.;-)
tgirsch, there is a considerable difference between a "social safety net" and "government supplied and taxpayer supported sponsorship of parasitism". I favor the former, I abhor the latter. What grates on my nerves like fingernails on a blackboard is when someone states that, because I do not like the latter, then I think the former should not be attempted.
So, I take great exception to your comment:
"And we know, from experience, that some people are going to be left behind -- many, yes, through their own fault, but many because of circumstances beyond their control.
Many of us (apparently not you) feel that it is in our collective best interest to create a system in which mistakes or bad fortune don't necessarily lead directly to ruin. I'd venture to say most of us feel that way (your readers notwithstanding)."
This reader does feel that way. Mistakes and bad fortune are one kind of thing, but intentional parasitism is another.
You wrote of Kevin:
"Could we do a better job providing such a system than we do today? This is the first part of where you and I differ -- since you believe the whole underlying idea is fundamentally flawed, you seem to believe that it cannot be done any better. Further, you seem to believe it would be better to do nothing at all, whereas I believe that would be short-sighted and, in the long term, disastrous."
I don't read that in Kevin's writings. It seems to me that he has excercised considerable patient skill in trying to convey the overwhelming effect that government support of parasitism has had on our society.
What I don't see in his writings is condemnation of a safety net. What I don't see in your writings is condemnation of government sponsored parasitism.
Am I missing something?
Hmmm ...
Between my writing my last comment and posting it, Kevin posted his comment. Apparently he is not in favor of any government sponsored "safety net". I stand corrected.
Kevin, the amazing thing about the original Ponzi scam was that people continued to invest in it even after they knew what it was and that it was doomed to fail. The parallel with government handouts is amazing.
"I stand corrected."
Don't you hate that when it happens? ;-)
Yup, shore do. But, I ain't afraid to admit it when it happens.
If I remember correctly, the U.S. is no longer a "pure" welfare state. In 1994, the government started a welfare-to-work program in order to reduce the dependency on welfare. It is believed that by some that this program that has started a slight downward decline in the poverty rate in the U.S.
Brian:
Point taken, and this is why I try to avoid gun control debates. If you're careless and use imprecise terminology, people will pounce on that and there can be no meaningful debate. I should have said handguns, and more specifically that America has a lot more of those than most other places.
But this is the problem with gun nuttery: there's absolutely no room for a moderate point of view, and anyone who dares to utter anything that challenges then Gun Nut Talking Points is to be ridiculed and disposed of as quickly as possible. Thank you for illustrating that.
Then again, I suppose you're right. A country guy who lives half a mile from his neighbor is every bit as likely as someone in a densely-populated urban area to encounter a situation where gun violence becomes likely; and that if we could wave a magic wand and make all the handguns in the city disappear, stabbings would replace shooting murders at an exactly 1-to-1 ratio. Thanks for clearing that up. :)
Kevin:
Until the Ponzi scheme comes crashing down. The problem with entitlement programs, as with most government programs, is that they never get smaller, ("If a little is good, more is better!") and sooner or later the tax burded required to sustain them crushes the economy.
Except that exactly the same thing applies to a consumer-driven economy. Growth is required, and as soon as growth stops, the whole thing comes crashing down. So you've essentially just made capitalism disappear in a puff of logic. :)
As a side note, social security doesn't require growth at all; what it does require (and won't ever have) is a relatively stable ratio between current workers and current beneficiaries. At the program's inception, that ratio was something like 16:1, but it's currently only something like 2.5:1 -- had the ratio held at 16:1 (and had both parties not consistently raided the money earmarked for the program), we wouldn't have this program.
In this sense, referring to Social Security as a "Ponzi scheme" seems a wee bit hyperbolic to me. And I'm not the only one who thinks so.
The "social safety net" was not and should not be a function of government, but it became one.
Because that worked so well during the great depression, I can see why people would hearken back to those days.
And now it's two-thirds of our entire Federal budget, and growing.
Just because a number is incorrect doesn't mean it souldn't be repeated, after all. Where's Brian to rip your head off and crap down your neck (or at least call "bullshit") on that? :) C'mon, Brian, chop chop!
As an aside, I believe "Hubris" is Greek in origin, not German.
Whatever, egghead. :) I'll engage that when you come down from your ivory tower of intelligentsia and speak like the common folk. ;) (Seriously, I knew Hubris wasn't German; I was referring to Weltanshauung.)
We in the "reality-based" community can see the pyramid collapse coming, but we're also aware that the population is loath to do anything about it.
Oh, I get it. We're smart and they're dumb is off-limits for me, but A-OK for you. It's a good thing we've got you to look out for those peasants who can't see what you in the "reality-based" community can see. Perhaps you've been "anointed" after all! :)
DJ:
This reader does feel that way. Mistakes and bad fortune are one kind of thing, but intentional parasitism is another.
Which roughly puts you in the category of "we still need to do something, just differently" that Kevin disparages. The whole idea of a safety net is, he argues, fundamentally flawed.
Truth to tell, I'd be willing to talk about a great number of reforms to various social service programs. As I've already alluded, Medicare is a bloated cow that I'd bet could be cut in half or less, even without booting anyone off its doles.
Social Security could be substantially cut by transforming it from its current role as a near-universal pension plan to more of a need-based safety net. More modestly, we could incent people (through tax breaks or other means) to opt-out of receiving benefits, if they don't really need them. That way, you're not screwing anyone. You could also do other things like increase the retirement age and slow the growth of benefits to reduce the strain on the system, although these last would admittedly only delay problems, not eliminate them.
From a cold, calculating perspective (and no, I'm not advocating this!) a massive baby boomer "die-off" would also pretty much do the trick.
Hell, Tom, I'm starting to like you!
tgirsch, a consumer-driven economy doesn't require growth, it requires freedom. Your logic disappeared in a puff of false premise.
I remember that English single mother with three daughters aged 12, 14 and 16. When all of them got pregnant (yes, also the 12yo one) and the fathers ran away, the mother said "Frankly, I blame the schools".
This is the obnoxious mindset.
Yes, indeed.
Kevin:
Hell, Tom, I'm starting to like you!
Now I'm confused. For which?
DJ:
No, it requires growth. How many industries out there thrive without growth? Suppose, for example, people completely stopped buying new houses. That is, no growth in the housing industry. What do you suppose happens? The impact on the economy isn't pretty.
I like you because you engage. I like you because you're intelligent and willing to defend your position without getting (too) snarky. I like you because you apparenly have a sense of humor (I knew you meant "Weltanschauung", I was just giggin' ya).
I like you because you're a challenge.
I have little expectation of swaying your position, or you mine, but I like the mental exercise. You're a worthy opponent.
We have vastly different worldviews. Those views color how we think, and how we perceive things. Hopefully I'll get a post out of it this weekend, or maybe next. After all, you took a full week to respond, I should have the same option.
And, as for the "two-thirds of the federal budget" - mea culpa. It's only half. But it's heading for two-thirds in the not-so-distant future.
We spent more than a trillion dollars ($1,000,000,000,000) on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in the 2004 ($2.2 trillion) budget year.
So, my apologies. Half, not two-thirds. Pardon the hell out of me! ;-)
tgirsch, you ask:
"How many industries out there thrive without growth?"
Counting them is more than a mite silly, but a few examples will suffice to illustrate the concept. Remember that your statement originated with comments about a "consumer driven economy". So, how about a few consumer driven industries that thrive without growing?
Some that come to mind are industries that deliver what people consume. They continue to produce products and services which the people continue to consume, because people will continue to consume regardless of whether or not the population grows and regardless of whether or not the industry grows. Thus, growth is irrelevant to their continuing prosperity.
Some examples:
providing groceries
providing natural gas
providing electricity
providing water
repairing automobiles
making movies
skiing
golfing
farming
It's a tiny list and it's not complete, but you should see the point. It illustrates a simple concept. There are industries that produce, day after day after day, products and services that people consume. They prosper, make money, and provide jobs, day after day after day, by being efficient, not by getting bigger.
The housing construction industry is not one of them. It services a growing population, without which it would die.
A supermarket, on the other hand, does not depend on the growth of itself or of the population to survive. It can stay successful continuously without it growing and without the population growing. It thrives by being efficient, as evidenced by its razor-thin profit margins. It doesn't have to grow to be successful, it just has to work, and it does.
Kevin:
OK, now I get it. I thought maybe you liked me because I suggested a massive boomer die-off. :)
And, as for the "two-thirds of the federal budget" - mea culpa. It's only half.
Then there should be no need to exaggerate. :)
Pardon the hell out of me!
I'm afraid if I did that, I might be branded an "activist judge." :)
DJ:
I think you vastly underestimate just how important growing demand is to the profitability of those industries you mention. Without growth, many of those industries would indeed survive, but they most certainly would not thrive.
Skiing and golfing are particularly good examples here, because they require people to have disposable income, something far fewer would actually have absent a growth economy.
Tom:
"Then there should be no need to exaggerate."
Just so you know, I wasn't exaggerating. I was quoting sites that were in error. I was simply wrong. When you pointed out the error, I did further research for the facts.
Once again, a comment thread isn't the best place to make one's point.
tirsch, your original statement was:
"Except that exactly the same thing applies to a consumer-driven economy. Growth is required, and as soon as growth stops, the whole thing comes crashing down."
That is clear and plain English. The ink's dry. To paraphrase, industries in a consumer-driven economy come "crashing down" if their growth stops.
Your example of such an industry, namely the housing construction industry, is a very poor one. It is not "consumer-driven" -- its products are not "consumed".
Your subsequent question
"How many industries out there thrive without growth?"
is itself a bit silly. "Thrive" means "to grow vigorously", and so "thriving" without "growing" is self-contradictory.
And so, my use of the word "thrive" by providing examples of industries that "thrive without growing" was equally in error. "Thrive" was not the correct word. I meant them as examples of industries that continue to operate, at a profit, without growing. Mea culpa.
Now, to business.
It is irrelevant how, as you put it, "important growing demand is to the profitability of those industries" that I cited. The question is not whether they benefit from growth, nor is it whether they desire growth. The question is whether or not they require growth to survive, i.e. whether or not they come "crashing down" if they do not grow.
No, they don't. They might want growth and they might benefit from growth, but they do not require it to survive and they do not require it to be profitable. They do not come "crashing down" without it.
To illustrate, consider one example, namely the grocery industry, a bit more carefully. I have a good friend, a high school classmate of my younger brother, who has been in the business more than thirty years. He is a produce specialist with a major grocery chain. He tells me the industry depends on stability, efficiency, and good planning, not on growth. A quarterly profit margin of 1.75% is viewed as grounds for joyous celebration. That is not the viewpoint of a "growth" oriented business. Their success depends on people continuing to eat, not on people making more people.
Now, go back to your original statement. It was not simply that growth is a good and desirable thing, rather it was that growth is indispensable to survival in a consumer-driven economy. It ain't. Survival in a consumer-driven economy depends on consumption, not growth, and profitability depends on efficiency, not growth.
OOPS.
Beats me how it happened, but my browser put "tgirsch" in the "name" field of the last comment before I posted it. I had typed "DJ" there -- I remember typing it.
Damned if I know how it happened. I sure as hell didn't type it there.
Sorry 'bout that.
DJ
(Fixed it.)
Edited By Siteowner
OK, I figured out what I did.
Ain't gonna tell.
Ain't gonna do it again, either.
DJ:
We're getting into economic wonkishness, but I think we'll have to agree to disagree. For one thing, "thrive" is the correct word, if you use the "prosper/be successful" sense of the word (Def 1). Although "propser" probably would have been a better word.
In any case, I stand by my original statement, because it doesn't refer to specific segments of the economy, but to the economy as a whole. Profitability ultimately requires strong demand for a product or service, and there's no driver of demand quite like growth. Without growth, demand in many industries would flag (in the "drop/become limp" sense), and that would require those industries to downsize -- which means people out of work, with less disposable income, which means even less demand. You see where this is going.
Bottom line is, capitalism does very well as long as there's growth (in particular, steady, sustainable growth), and not so well if there isn't.
tgirsch, once again, your original statement was
"Except that exactly the same thing applies to a consumer-driven economy. Growth is required, and as soon as growth stops, the whole thing comes crashing down."
Your statement was about "a consumer-driven economy". Now you're changing your tune to consider "the economy as a whole". The former is abstract, the latter is not.
Your statement was that "as soon as growth stops, the whole thing comes crashing down". That is unequivocal, and it's dead wrong. Our "economy as a whole" has had periods without growth, some of them quite long in duration and some of them quite deep. They are called "recessions", and during them the whole thing did not come crashing down. The economy did not "crash" and the non-existent crash did not start "as soon as" growth stopped.
Your statement is demonstrably false but you won't admit it. I do see where you're going. You don't see that you ain't getting there. You're trying to weasel out of your own words and it won't work.
TG:
"Bottom line is, capitalism does very well as long as there's growth (in particular, steady, sustainable growth), and not so well if there isn't."
*sigh*
So which system do you recommend for negative growth?
All this adds up to is a clash between people who WANT to or see nothing wrong with imposing their "worldview", which is some kind of philosophy, on others and those that do not.
Guess which side the social safety net is on. Guess which side welfarists are on. They are one and the same.
Its black and white. One side is correct in its approach to life on earth and the other is not. One assumes human beings are individuals and entitled to seek out their lives as they choose and the other assumes some are entitled to things that others produce. For one side there is metaphysical justification. For the other there is none. No amount of rationalizations will change that or make the wrong side right.
Nothing else need be said.
Ahem.
Won't stop the flow of words, though, Bridget.
Kevin,
Once again, I applaud your tenacity and patience in debating these issues over and over again.
I don't bother, anymore.
Private enterprise, mostly, works. State enterprise, mostly, fails.
We could argue the nuts and bolts forever, but the immutable reality is that statism will eventually doom a society.
And don't even get me started on gun control...
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