[yummyfajitas]

You can either take away welfare benefits; or you can give much more rewards for working.

A third, mostly unexplored option, is to reduce the status/luxuries of people accepting welfare.

I.e., instead of receiving housing vouchers and money to buy food/clothing, they could receive dormitory rooms (no TV or XBox), healthy dormitory meals and government issued grey jumpsuits.

Under such a system, there would be a significant incentive to get a job and no one would go hungry.

[Karunamon]

This sounds eerily like the current Republican platform. Abuse of the welfare system has been explored in the past and found to be a tiny minority of all people receiving it. Let's not punish those people who use the system correctly on account of those that don't, hm?

[yummyfajitas]

Abuse of the welfare system has been explored in the past and found to be a tiny minority of all people receiving it.

Depends on what you mean by "abuse". Most poor people don't work and don't even look for work, preferring to collect free money. That's not "abuse" in the sense that welfare rules allow people to do this, but it is behavior we should try to prevent.

Ultimately I favor eliminating welfare and replacing it with a guaranteed unskilled job having below market pay. That's the perfect way to distinguish between the deserving and undeserving poor - no work, no welfare.

I'm not sure how this relates to the republican platform - as far as I know, the two front runners (Romney and Santorum) are basically democrats on economic issues. But I haven't followed closely, so feel free to correct me.

[Karunamon]

>Most poor people don't work and don't even look for work,

Citation badly needed.

[yummyfajitas]

I'm sure I sound like a broken record for posting this yet again, but here you go:

http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2009.pdf

I exclude children from the numbers here:

http://crazybear.posterous.com/why-the-poor-dont-work

Net result, 36% of poor adults work or look for work at least 26 weeks/year, and 25% of poor adults work full time or look for full time work.

[Karunamon]

If you had stuck with that raw data I wouldn't have taken any issue with what you said. It's that "preferred" that stuck in my craw.

All this data says is exactly what the last line of your last post does. There is no "preference" stated here. The reasons why are not explored (and would probably be out of the scope of this paper anyways).

Keep in mind, our unemployment rate right now is absurdly high right now. I somehow doubt that's because people "prefer" to remain poor.

[yummyfajitas]

There is no "preference" stated here.

Without compelling evidence otherwise, I tend to subscribe to the theory of revealed preferences - our actions reveal what we really want.

But you are logically correct, there are some possibilities, e.g., the poor would prefer to have a job but irrationally don't look for one.

I somehow doubt that's because people "prefer" to remain poor.

You are looking at the wrong choice set. The choice set is not [ poor, middle class]. The choice set is [ (poor, leisure), (middle class, hard work) ]. The theory I'm pushing is that for some people, utility(leisure)-utility(hard work) > utility(middle class) - utility(poor). See my blog post for more details.

Also, this is not caused by the current recession. The numbers have been similar since 1996 (the year of the earliest report I can find with a quick google search).

http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp96.htm

http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2002.pdf

http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2006.pdf

(Tweak URLs to get data for intermediate years.)

[pault]

I disagree; this form of welfare is increasingly common here in the states. We call it prison.

[yummyfajitas]

Anyone who is down on their luck can walk into prison, receive benefits, and move out as soon as they find something better?

[gregholmberg]

... instead of receiving housing vouchers and money to buy food/clothing, they could receive dormitory rooms (no TV or XBox), healthy dormitory meals and government issued grey jumpsuits.

I am surprised, and a little disappointed, that there has been no mention yet in these comments of Marshall Brain's story "Robotic Nation". It is a well-reasoned exploration of exactly this issue.

  ---------------------------------------------

From "Robotic Nation"

The January 20, 2003 issue of Time magazine notes the trend:

"Cities have lost patience, concentrating on getting the homeless out of sight. In New York City, where shelter space can't be created fast enough, Mayor Mike Bloomberg has proposed using old cruise ships for housing."

This is not science fiction -- this is today's news. What we are talking about here are massive, government-controlled welfare dormitories keeping everyone who is unemployed "out of sight". ...

  ---------------------------------------------

http://www.marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm

[meric]

One thing I still don't get from marshall brain (from his otherwise visionary writing), is: If there is going to be 50% unemployment, who is going to be spending their money on flights. Will people eat as much fast food? If no one is working, who needs robotic tax accountants?

He says there would be many sectors where human jobs are replaced. I'd say many sectors gone, completely. Who needs to go to a fast food restaurant when your robot can make it for you for... the price of bread? Who needs tax accountants when your computer can do it?

[gregholmberg]

I am cautiously optimistic that something will appear to engage the bodies and minds of those thrown out of work by any future waves of automation.

The solution will probably be something that I think is silly today.

An example. I was a fairly early adopter of the Internet. By the time I got around to reading Ender's Game, the leading search engine was Archie, and the web had not been invented. But I recognized Usenet (or something like it) in Card's description of discussion boards.

I thought the idea that anyone might achieve anything practical in the real world based on the strength of electronically published rhetoric was not just silly, but slap-my-knee hilarious.

Just look, I thought, at the laughable impotence of all these "letters to the editor" in newspapers. Surely electronic journalism will be cheaper, easier and much more accessible, therefore much more popular, and therefore of exponentially less value.

I kept chuckling for years, even as blogging gained popularity and influence.

Even though I was quite interested in an outcome like Card predicted, and had even been involved in getting the machinery in place to support a future like he imagined, I still reached a conclusion that was completely unsound.

We will probably be fine.

[ajays]

I think building dorms to house the population would be a significant obstacle to this approach.