Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by blowski 1733 days ago
FDR’s New Deal certainly helped a lot of poor people in the USA, as did the roll out of the welfare state and NHS in the UK, and pensions in Germany.

That said, government intervention is not sufficient. It must come with structural improvements, and not just be free handouts. And too much help can also be counter-productive by crowding out the very thing it’s trying to nurture.
1 comments
robomartin 1733 days ago
> FDR’s New Deal certainly helped a lot of poor people in the USA

Not quite. As is usually the case with such programs, people tend to form opinions based on what is easily and externally visible. Reality isn't every that simple. The truth of the matter is that the not-easily-visible aspects of this plan harmed the poor and middle class for decades. Yes, lots of people were busy, but, no, it didn't elevate millions out of poverty and into the middle class.

This article touches the surface of some of the issues:

https://www.cato.org/commentary/how-fdrs-new-deal-harmed-mil...

Reality is not described by a single variable, it is a complex multivariate problem. A program that promises more jobs is never without consequences. The details are always in the unseen variables that don't make it into political speeches or headlines. Nobody talks about them, and yet, that's where reality lies.

link
blowski 1732 days ago
If you give a starving person food so that they might live, and then the number of people who depend on free food goes up, did you do a good thing? That's an ethical question with no "right" answer.

I suspect most libertarians and those who lean to the right would say "no, you saved one person but weakened the system as a whole, and thus you have created more hungry people". Whereas socialists and those who lean to the left would say "yes, because saving a human life when you can is always a good thing".

As I see it, the biggest problem in modern society is that we've stopped respecting the right for everybody to have their own view on issues like that, and instead come to believe that "the other" is so wrong that they must be corrected at all costs. I believe the Cato Institute is just as guilty of that as AOC's horde of Twitter followers.

link