[sershe]

Is this supposed to be a trick question? For example, if you tax people and build a highway (or a rail line), someone driving on it/riding it but not paying taxes does not contribute to this particular QOL improvement.

Generally, there are plenty of people who do not contribute to society in any major way (e.g. even taxes), or even directly harm it.

[techbio]

Not a trick question. The quality of life I am talking about is apparently different from yours.

[sershe]

Well, apparently you are using a very exotic definition of "quality of life", especially in the original context (of the states increasing the quality of life).

For any specific improvement in quality of life, as it is commonly understood (and whether it's measured for an average person/median person/the most miserable person/...) there's very obviously somebody who doesn't contribute to it. Not literally everyone helps run a homeless shelter, plant a forest, build a highway, or run a non-corrupt judiciary. Similarly, there are quite obviously some people who detract from any particular improvement, either directly (whether it's a corrupt cop decreasing public trust, a burglar decreasing safety, a factory fouling up the air, a hiker littering in the park), or by using up a public resource more than they contribute to it.

There's no reason why somebody's combined contribution cannot be a net negative. So, it's very easy to find such a person.

[techbio]

Since no one is perfect, it is so easy to find such a person, that it is every person.

National-level quality of life as an average of states that can make either choice is like some states littering and some states cleaning up after them, or as a parent poster wrote "punishes states that attempt to increase their quality of life too far above the national average".

You seem to think having a low quality of life and lowering the quality of life are the same, and additionally, that improving the quality of life in a given state is something that a state, almost by definition, cannot do.

[sershe]

> Since no one is perfect, it is so easy to find such a person, that it is every person.

Nope, that is a vacuous statement. Some people contribute more, some people contribute less - again, trivial to demonstrate, let's say I contribute X to others' QoL, positive or negative. If I go out now and throw my trash away in the park, I now contribute less than X, whatever X was.

> You seem to think having a low quality of life and lowering the quality of life are the same, and additionally, that improving the quality of life in a given state is something that a state, almost by definition, cannot do.

Where did you derive that from? To be fair I don't even understand anymore what you mean by quality of life :) Wikipedia: "Quality of life (QOL), according to Britannica, is the degree to which an individual is healthy, comfortable, and able to participate in or enjoy life events". QoL for the state is thus a metric (an average/median/...) of individual QoLs in that state. Within the state, individuals and groups (including the govt i.e. the state) can improve various aspects on QoL, usually via specific amenities (physical or "cultural" like safety/trust/...). They can also detract from it. Everything I said above follows from that.

[techbio]

I believe I have illustrated a mismatch between QoL for an individual and for a state in aggregate.

Your examples only illustrate simple behaviors, and do not show that there are negative and positive contributors, only isolated incidents any person can choose between, and whether or not this sums to a positive or negative person in relation to eg. their tax contributions.

At the state level aggregate, which is more relevant when talking about population flows with regard to differing state policies, each of your examples can fall under Simpson's Paradox and form a misleading picture.

You have, I believe, neglected to address the points made with respect to reversion toward the national mean for progressive state policies.

Edit: Say for example, two states A and B have identical QoL by whatever measures you choose. Then in an effort to improve QoL in their state, A offers free comprehensive healthcare, but state B does not. Some of the sick people in state B, having lower QoL for reasons of health and acting in their own interests, move to state A for treatment. Now state B, with fewer sick people registers a median increase in QoL. Perhaps state A registers a smaller increase than they had hoped for, and now bear an additional tax burden.

State B benefits by doing nothing. State A improves actual QoL for sick people. What am I missing?

[sershe]

> do not show that there are negative and positive contributors, only isolated incidents any person can choose between, and whether or not this sums to a positive or negative person in relation to eg. their tax contributions

How is "there are negative and positive contributors" different from "whether or not this [behavior] sums to a positive or negative person"? There's no reason Simpson's paradox would apply here; and, Simpson's paradox with respect to what? We are trying to find if a specific person X is a negative or positive contributor to local QoL.

Your example actually illustrates that and contradicts the first point - if we introduce a free service, let's say QoL would go up; someone moves in to abuse it, you admit QoL goes up less ("smaller increase than they hoped for") - that person is a negative contributor, all other things being equal. Or, if you say their net is still positive (no reason it would always be positive), then the original complaint - states punished for improving QoL - does not apply. They got rewarded by this positive net contribution, not punished, right?

As for the example itself, there's nothing "free" - someone pays the doctors providing healthcare, etc., and you could argue the payers' QoL goes down. If you don't limit how much people may have to pay (it's universal vs a limited number of taxpayers), their QoL can go down a lot. If it doesn't balance out and the state gets "punished", it's precisely because it's bad policy that doesn't improve QoL. The debatability of the merits of universal healthcare itself aside, the reason it may not be too bad on country level is because it's hard to move in to make use of it; it comes with status/residency restrictions, and also health-based immigration restrictions in some countries (like Canada, IIRC).

I do admit I generally think states can improve QoL much less than they think they can, and can degrade QoL much more than they think they will, but there are many things states can do (and have done in the past) that create good incentives and don't suffer from this problem. Most of them actually involve undoing things. Others involve things that incentivize more positive contributors than negative as 2nd order effect; be it safety, building certain kinds of infrastructure, etc.