[skaevola]

"Republicans are less empathetic towards their fellow citizens"

Seriously?

It's well established that conservatives/republicans donate more to charity.

Here's Nicholas Kristoff's column on it:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/opinion/21kristof.html?_r=...

Not only do Republicans donate more in absolute terms to charity, they also have lower average incomes, which means that the average giving as a portion of income is much higher. And it's not just donations to their church, Republicans are even more likely to donate blood than Democrats!

I'm not writing this because I want to claim the moral high ground for the Republicans, I see Republicans and Democrats as each having different takes on how best to help the poor. Neither side has a monopoly on empathy.

[andyjohnson0]

"they also have lower average incomes, which means that the average giving as a portion of income is much higher"

I'd be cautious about comparing the average of one distribution with the average of another. Unless you know how the quantities are distributed (and income in particular is unlikely to be normally distributed), you risk making some misleading conclusions.

[mozumder]

> It's well established that conservatives/republicans donate more to charity.

Liberals solve social problems through taxes and big government, instead of donations.

Neither side may have a monopoly, but one side is far more effective than the other at solving social problems.

[jerf]

I honestly don't even know which side it is that you think is "far more effective" at solving social problems. Do you think it's the Democrats? Because "big government and taxes" are also far more effective at creating social problems that local charities. Have you read about the corrosive effects of welfare on black communities? Have you ever joined in complaining about the inability of public school systems to successfully adapt and harness changing technologies? Have you noticed that our biggest social problems just "happen" to also be located right where Democratic policies were enacted (i.e., the policies preceded the social degradation)? All of these things are certainly at least debatable, but they are also certainly not so obviously false that they can simply be discarded without consideration.

"Big government and taxes" may theoretically be more capable of solving problems, but there's a big gulf between theory and reality.

And back on point so this is at least less an off-topic diversion than it otherwise would be, are you A: inclined to agree that hierarchies are bad for cooperation even as B: you declare that the largest hierarchy in the world, "government", is better at solving social problems than distributed non-hierarchical networks? I don't know, because you, mozumder, personally didn't say, but I rather suspect there's a lot of people here holding both those beliefs simultaneously without noticing the profound philosophical conflicts they have.

[mozumder]

Have you read about the corrosive effects of welfare on black communities?

No. I have read about welfare reducing poverty. I'm sure you have, too.

Have you ever joined in complaining about the inability of public school systems to successfully adapt and harness changing technologies?

No. I have read about public schools outperforming private charter schools.

Have you noticed that our biggest social problems just "happen" to also be located right where Democratic policies were enacted (i.e., the policies preceded the social degradation)?

No. I have read about liberal policies solving social problems, as usual.

All of these things are certainly at least debatable, but they are also certainly not so obviously false that they can simply be discarded without consideration.

Why not? I just discarded them without consideration, and you can, too.

The question isn't whether or not liberal policies solve problems far more effectively than Republican policies. The question is how quickly you will accept that truth.

[bobby_9x]

"No. I have read about welfare reducing poverty. I'm sure you have, too."

Only in the short-term. In the long-term, it creates generations of people completely dependent on the government, never really getting the chance to get themselves out of poverty.

All of my extended family are like this. They don't work because the government gives them enough to live.

"No. I have read about public schools outperforming private charter schools."

Where is the proof of this? In my area, the public schools are terrible. It sickens me that I have to pay taxes to support them when they just continue to spiral downward. It's also impossible to get rid of bad teachers, because whenever some sort of solution is suggested (for measuring effectiveness), the unions come back and say it isn't possible.

"The question isn't whether or not liberal policies solve problems far more effectively than Republican policies. The question is how quickly you will accept that truth"

Most liberal solutions that I've seen leave out human nature and a history of complete failure and re-dress it as something 'new'.

[mozumder]

it creates generations of people completely dependent on the government

Where are these magical people that aren't dependent on government?

Are you one of those? How do you travel? Do you build your own roads? What do you do for mail? Do you use UPS for all mail, and they use their own roads?

Did your employees learn literacy from private schools? Or did government teach them? How did they learn to follow work instructions?

I would like to find these magical people that aren't dependent on government. They sound like they are awesome people. Maybe they also have guns to defend themselves from invading armies, and have fire-proof houses?

You are dependent on government. You can ignore your ego that actively harms you by telling you that you aren't dependent on government. The quicker you learn this, the better off you will be.

[bobby_9x]

I'm receiving services in return for the incredible amount of money, in taxes, I pay into the system.

In reality, the government is dependent on me.

Our goal should be to encourage more people to be like me (pay more into the system than I will ever use) so people that truly need it can use it.

Welfare and an abundance of social programs encourages just the opposite: live on welfare and never make enough to give back into the system.

[kazinator]

In defense of grandparent, let me point out that you ignored the adverb "completely". There is "dependent on government" and then there is "completely dependent on government".

[orthecreedence]

> It sickens me that I have to pay taxes to support them when they just continue to spiral downward.

This is a feedback loop. I'm not saying that throwing more money at public schools will help them get better, but taking money away will certainly make them worse.

> Most liberal solutions that I've seen leave out human nature and a history of complete failure and re-dress it as something 'new'.

Actually agree. Most liberal policies are somewhat naive. But on the other end you have the free market people crowing about benefits of deregulation and wanting to disassemble public services because "I don't want my tax dollars going to [parks, buses, schools, etc etc] I don't even use!!"

There's a medium ground here. The point of society isn't to preserve your tax dollars or to give everyone welfare. The point is that when we all live together as a group, we all do a lot better than we did when it was six of us in a group starving out on the tundra.

There are some public services that we just shouldn't live without, especially if we want to stay competitive as a country. However, some of them need complete overhauls or just shouldn't exist in the first place.

[bobby_9x]

I agree with you here. We shouldn't be taking away money from our public school systems. We should be fixing the current situation and making people accountable for the wasted money.

My parents grew up near detroit and they told me about how the state poured money into the school system for years.

They are now some of the worst in the nation, with abysmal graduation rates.

[randallsquared]

> I honestly don't even know which side it is that you think is "far more effective" at solving social problems.

...and I really hope that it was intentional. :)

[vezzy-fnord]

Taxes only go so far. Higher wealth elasticities of demand among those of higher income means less sensitivity to it, and the greater purchasing power means a lower opportunity cost to avoiding those taxes. Then, once the taxed income is retrieved, you must rely that the state apparatus will properly allocate it without pork-barreling, corrupting or shoving some omnibus legislation on transit until it finally becomes executive procedure.

This means that, at some point, all forms of taxation eventually boomerang and become regressive. Even when you introduce tax credits for lower income citizens, the bureaucratic and personal costs to managing them also tend to become regressive since third-parties will usually be paid for consulting and navigating across the labyrinthian tax code. This creates a situation where you open up for rent-seeking players whose business models depend on the aforementioned labyrinth, and who as a result get to redistribute income via wasteful inefficiency, lobbying and then offset the gains from tax credits by the losses of navigating them.

"Big government" inevitably leads either to totalitarianism, or to "kludgeocracy" as in the United States [1].

[1] http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/kludgeocr...

[vixen99]

That's your assertion. It's always fun and easy to spend other people's money which is why the liberal solution is popular. Building up a debt of, for instance, nearly $18.7 trillion and rising has no eventual knock on effect and is quite in order? Probably misinformation but I saw an estimate that as much as some 70% of the American public depend in significant ways on their government for financial survival. You call that 'solving social problems'? Sounds ultimately terminal to me. But that's just me sounding off. I do gather that some really well-informed folk do take that view and can back it up.

[nhaehnle]

Make that 100% of the American (or really any state's) public. Do you think your life would just go on without any troubles at all if government suddenly disappeared?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that everybody[0] depends on the social structures around them (which includes the government). It's just that for whatever reasons, often pretty arbitrary ones, there is a consensus narrative which labels some of those dependencies as "bad" and others as "good" (or "normal"). Then people invent lots of after-the-fact rationalizations and categories to try to ignore the "good" dependencies and focus only on the "bad" ones.

[0] There may be some persons out in the woods who live in a cabin they built using their bare hands, with only the tools that they built themselves, without using oil-based fuels or something like the weather forecast. I'd say it's safe to ignore those persons for the purpose of this discussion, if they even exist.

[mason240]

>Do you think your life would just go on without any troubles at all if government suddenly disappeared?

The classic "I'm going to pretend your criticism of one part of government means you want to completely abolish all government" strawman.

[nhaehnle]

I'd agree with you, but vixen99's post does not actually articulate an awareness of criticizing a particular part of the government. There's talk about "dependence on the government" by 70% of the public (probably the incorrect number according to what they really mean, but let's go with it). My point is really that this statement is meaningless because it's really 100% of the public who depends on the government when you think of it.

For example: people who work for recording companies undeniably depend on government handouts for their financial survival (think copyright law). Do you think vixen99 intended to include this group of people or not?

So my criticism, which you unfortunately missed (because I admittedly could have been clearer about it) is that the language used to attempt to discuss an argument is already wrong.

The intended argument itself may have merit, but as long as you talk about it in a misleading way you're not helping the debate.

[zappo2938]

Much of conservative charity is to churches and religious causes. It's the difference between praying cancer away and investing in cancer research. I can go on for a while about the difference between state offered social services in Massachusetts being far, far more effective than church offered social services in Texas. This difference in approach also has to do with 45.83% of people in Massachusetts are Catholic and with political beliefs in line with the Kennedys and only 18.72% of people in Texas are Catholic with many people from other forms of religion at war with government that wants to teach children science and evolution in schools and treat homeless people with medication, stable housing, and education rather than treating homeless people with prayer and preaching about Jesus.

[skaevola]

This is actually not true, here's a quote from the link that I posted.

"Conservatives also appear to be more generous than liberals in nonfinancial ways. People in red states are considerably more likely to volunteer for good causes, and conservatives give blood more often. If liberals and moderates gave blood as often as conservatives, Mr. Brooks said, the American blood supply would increase by 45 percent."

It's true that a lot of the money is donated to churches. But even when you ignore the money that is donated to churches, Republicans still donate a higher percentage of their income to secular charities than Democrats do, donate more blood, and volunteer more.

"many people from other forms of religion at war with government that wants to teach children science and evolution in schools and treat homeless people with medication, stable housing, and education rather than treating homeless people with prayer and preaching about Jesus."

I live in Texas, and I can tell you from first hand experience that this is a ridiculous and false stereotype.

[andyjohnson0]

The language used in the NYT article you referenced is fairly loose for something that is trying to draw conclusions from statistics. And it is not hard to find people questioning the reliability of the source work, Who Really Cares by Arthur Brooks.

For example, you and the article's author state that conservatives donate more blood (which may well be factually correct) and seem to assume that there is a direct causal relationship from political belief. It may instead be that non-conservatives are disproportionately likely to belong to communities that have negative attitude to blood donation. See [1] for a possible example. There may be many other confounding factors.

"People in red states are considerably more likely to volunteer for good causes"

"People in red states" are not all conservatives. If those people in aggregate are more likely to volunteer then the causal factor(s) may have more to do with geography or regional history than political outlook.

[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20840534

[zappo2938]

Republicans are also much older than Democrats. A very large portion of Republicans are retired and collect social security which is paid for by younger more likely to be liberal Democrats who don't have to time to volunteer because they are working to support their families and pay into social security to support retired people who just happen to be more likely Republican. The popular conservative argument against a basic income is that people will just suck the tit of big government and be lazy. That retired people on social security volunteer with their guaranteed minimum income is proof that a basic income does work. People instinctively care about other people and they do not want to be bored. Thank you for pointing that out.