[hellojesus]

> I'll advocate for something every other developed nation has, like paid paternity leave or a sane healthcare system

Paid parental leave creates both deadweight loss and moral hazard. It also tends to reduce labor inversely proportional to labor's cost, with the largest reduction in labor hitting highly skilled, sub middle-aged females. This should be obvious as it lowers the expected productivity of workers, moreso when you extend parental leave to family leave and allow for the care of ailing elders. The argument for it seems to hinge on the dollars allowing greater workforce participation, but I'm not sold that greater participation with lower expected productivity is greater than fewer productive workers.

Why should I have to pay for Debbie across the country to have a kid? Or Fred across the state?

Regarding healthcare, it's well known that decreasing prices increase demand. While some healthcare demand is totally inelastic (injuries, cancer, etc.), the front line pcp interactions are elastic. Compound in people's willingness to decrease self care since they don't have to pay for future healthcare, and you've increased the rate of inelastic demand instances in the future, increasing demand. Now consider that prices would no longer be dictated by free markets, and now we have trouble with price discovery, with the power seemingly going to the single consumer, so it's likely treatments will be underpaid, which may lead to fewer practicioners and fewer innovations. Maybe I'm wrong... I haven't thought about heath economics in a long while. My preference would be to see a forced decoupling of healthcare provided as work benefits such that everyone had to purchase it on the open market (even if that loss of negotiating freedom between private parties irks me).

[HaZeust]

>"Why should I have to pay for Debbie across the country to have a kid? Or Fred across the state?"

Because they pay for the same benefits you get, that they might not reap as often as you. That's the foundation of socialization, everyone's resources - that they fork over from taxation - is shared for various activities and settlements that give as many individuals (past, present and emerging) as much of an acceptable baseline of living as it can.

To be sure, the goal of socialization is also not usually to make everyone rich or give immense quality of life, it's to make sure everyone has the same "lowest" bar for things that members of society deem as essential, and that the bar set as "lowest" is as humane and efficient as possible.

[RHSeeger]

>> "Why should I have to pay for Debbie across the country to have a kid? Or Fred across the state?"

> Because they pay for the same benefits you get, that they might not reap as often as you.

I'd set the reason as even more basic than that. Children are absolutely essential the future of society. There is literally no way to argue that is not true.

Since they are essential to society, we should be working on ways to support them; as a society. Now, this can be argued against. But I feel pretty strongly that "I do not think it is important for us, as a society, to works towards goals that beneficial to society" is a fairly brain-dead stance. You can argue about the best uses for _available_ money; but to argue that's a matter of priorities, not "is it a valid goal".

[hellojesus]

I think my most basic argument is that society is the result of many individuals' participation. It should be viewed as emergemt of individuals working together and not as an organism in-and-of itself.

To that end, I think it is fully appropriate for the society to collapse if individuals within it determine to forgo children. We shouldn't redistribute from some to others purely to ensure society's continuum. Instead, individuals should maximize their utility, and in doing so create society.

These redistributions are not pareto optimal and have major deadweight losses and introduce moral hazard.

[RHSeeger]

> To that end, I think it is fully appropriate for the society to collapse if individuals within it determine to forgo children. We shouldn't redistribute from some to others purely to ensure society's continuum. Instead, individuals should maximize their utility, and in doing so create society.

We have an entire system of laws we put in place to force people to increase their utility within society.

What your statement is effectively arguing is... to go with anarchy; that we should not have rules that change human behavior, because human behavior _should_ be to maximize utility.

I think it's pretty well accepted that "just let everyone do whatever they want" isn't a viable system for a society.

[hellojesus]

You still need constraints. The law should exist to protect private property. The government should collect taxes to fund the legal system and public goods.

But I absolutely agree that the government shouldn't do much, if anything, more than that. Incentives to shape behavior should be extremely limited, because the government is the only entity that is allowed to force involuntarily transactions.

Voluntary transactions ensure that the transacting parties have a pareto optimal outcome. This is what should be maximized, even at the detriment of the longevity of society itself.

[immibis]

Why should the government do exactly the things that benefit society, benefit you, and don't benefit Debbie, but not the things that benefit society, benefit Debbie and don't benefit you? This is just disguised selfishness.

I'm not deep enough in the theory to know whether "voluntary transactions create a Pareto-optimal outcome" is a true statement. I suspect not, because of information asymmetry and so on.

Pareto-optimal is also kind of an arbitrary stopping point - you chose it because it supports your argument, not because it's actually a good one. If it was possible to make everyone 1000 times richer (in physical resources) but at the cost of making Elon Musk just another average person, that wouldn't be a Pareto move because it would decrease Elon's status, but it would still be extremely good. Why shouldn't we aim for that?

[Damogran6]

"We're making accomodations for the disabled because, on average, 100% of the population is disabled at one time or another."

[hellojesus]

I pay something like $150/month for private LTD insurance. All the government policies do is force everyone to participate with lower expected benefits. It would be more efficient for people to privately purchase it, where those who don't assume the risk of noncarry.

[Damogran6]

I'm talking about ramps to public buildings and handicap accessible bathrooms. It's a public good that most people don't realize they're actually going to use at some point.

Everybody drives the same roads ("Why would I pay to maintain Smith Street? I've never driven on it?"), some people REALLY need a firefighter in an emergency.

[hellojesus]

> I'm talking about ramps to public buildings and handicap accessible bathrooms.

To the extent these impact public buildings, I think this is a good thing. Just like I think public employers should not be allowed to discriminate based on age, race, etc.

But in both cases I would argue that private companies should not be held to the same standards.

Firefighters could arguably be a public good in that they are (approximately) nonrivalous and are definitely nonexcludable. In addition, fire fighting as a public good prevents the free rider problem that would likely exist with this service in the private market.

[HaZeust]

Sounds like a pretty good policy to back to me. I’ll never understand people that want to take advantage of the foundations of society for themselves, then become rather churlish when its their turn to do the same for others.

[hellojesus]

> that the bar set as "lowest" is as humane and efficient as possible

But by definition it is inefficient. Redistribution of money from Person A to Person B necessarily means Person A can't spend that money. If their optimal utility was to give that money to Person B, you wouldn't need such a policy governmentally.

Socialization makes sense for public goods, but healthcare and parental leave are both nonpublic.

As an annecdotal example, my state offers 12 weeks of parental leave. The maximum they are willing to pay is about $550/week. My company provides two weeks of paid leave. So for 10 weeks, I get the $550 from the state. But my w2 income is about 2k/week post tax, post 401k max. So I would forgo about $1400 a week to stay home. Daycare costs $550/week, so it's far better for me to work. But then I don't get the time off. And yet I still pay for others. This is an example of a terrible implementation of the already bad policy.

[jakelazaroff]

No, it's definitely more efficient:

- Preventative care is far cheaper and more effective than reactive care (e.g. your dentist telling you to floss more in a particular area vs. filling a cavity vs. filling a root canal)

- Insurance is more effective at dispersing costs amongst a larger pool of people

- In a system like the US where insurance companies must negotiate prices with healthcare providers, larger pools have more bargaining power

[hellojesus]

Yes, but what happens when you remove competition? Bargining power becomes absolute.

What happens when the single purchaser of healthcare refuses to pay an amount sufficient to raise supply to meet demand?

[jakelazaroff]

There's no need to ask this as a hypothetical; simply look at the many, many countries that have successfully implemented such systems.

[HaZeust]

I used to actually bat against universal healthcare for this reason, until COVID. The majority of private insurance companies are already doing that, here.

[hellojesus]

I think this is mostly because the US system strips choice from the individual. I hypothesize the outcomes would be far better if we decoupled private health insurance from employment and allowed an oprn market for individual consumers.

[vel0city]

Your anecdote values time with your newborn children at $0 and assumes people are physically able to immediately return to work after having a child. Seems like a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of life with a newborn.

It also ignores the societal costs of separating mothers and babies at such extremely young ages, reducing the rates of successful breastfeeding, and more.

It also assumes a considerably above-average income job.

Your username is hellojesus. Which action is more Christlike, providing for children and families or hoarding your wealth? Are we called to build bigger barns?

[hellojesus]

I omitted the valuation of time with my child since it is hard to capture empirically.

> It also ignores the societal costs of separating mothers and babies at such extremely young ages, reducing the rates of successful breastfeeding, and more.

I'm not ignoring this cost. I'm stating that this cost should be borne by the individual that elected to have a child; e.g., lowered labor participation for some duration. The current US federal policy recognizes this by allowing unpaid leave for some duration.

> It also assumes a considerably above-average income job.

My point exactly. If above average compensation is actively harmed by this policy through deadweight loss, it means the policy is bad. This ignores the plethora of moral hazard that is introduced too. For example, how to we reconcile those laborers that take 12 weeks of paid taxpayer vacations only to promptly quit their job upon restarting it? These folks were always going to drop out of the labor force; now we've given them 12 weeks of free money redistributed from productive members.

> Your username is hellojesus. Which action is more Christlike, providing for children and families or hoarding your wealth? Are we called to build bigger barns?

Religious inclinations should direct followers how to execute behavior for themselves of a voluntary nature. It should not be used to dictate that everyone in society follow the same moral orders at the behest of a gun, which is what governmental policy does.

[vel0city]

That you phrase it as a "vacation" and can't seem to put a dollar value on it but obviously less than a couple hundred dollars a week really points to the idea you have no idea what you're talking about.

I don't think anyone thinks 12 weeks with a newborn is a vacation, and yet most people probably wouldn't trade that 12 weeks with their newborn for anything in the world.

> I'm not ignoring this cost

You literally are ignoring the cost, as its not your given model. And its not a cost that will only be borne by the immediate caregivers, there are knock-on costs throughout society that will be felt by this change.

[RHSeeger]

> Socialization makes sense for public goods, but healthcare and parental leave are both nonpublic.

Challenge. Healthcare is very much a public "good". The healthier evereyone is, the less we spend on healthcare overall. And the more we can accomplish overall. It works in everyone's benefit for society to be healthy.

The same way it works in everyone's benefit to have roads. We both want to get to the store/work/etc, and want healthy people to take care of those places. Neither one is a need, both are beneficial to everyone.

[hellojesus]

There is a duality to providing healthcare as a public good, and that is preventive care through lifestyle choices may diminish. I'm not so careful as to not have four pops a day because the gov will pick up my diabetes tab. It's not clearly a net benefit to society.

For the record, I also suggest roads do not meet the definition of a public good.

[collingreen]

The government subsidizes the birth rate because it has decided it IS a social good to have a constantly replenishing workforce (and potential military force). You may disagree with doing that but the argument that it isn't a social good doesn't match where those policies are coming from.

Moreover, this blinders-on-libertarianism "I should only pay for things directly for me" approach doesn't work if you pick and choose; you have to address it in context of the entire system (ie, you can't silently accept all the benefits and only shout about the individual moments you don't come out on top).

This society, for better or worse, pools money to do things at scale even when some of those things don't have the direct and equal benefit to every individual, instead aiming for a general good for all, stability, and a platform for everyone to have higher potential.

Yes, this gets abused in many ways and yes, it should always be constantly evaluated for effectively spending money.

However, your anecdotes about how the women or the poors get more than you in certain policies aren't impactful without looking at the whole which includes everything from the roads, breathable air, a widespread and capable workforce, a dynamic labor market, powerful financial markets, a justice system, fire departments, and lots of consumer protections so we can focus on growth instead of spending all our time trying to research if your bank is actually a scam or if the restaurant down the street washes their hands enough.

[hellojesus]

My anecdote was used to show how the policy introduces moral hazard and deadweight loss. I would equally oppose it, as I do things like government mandated smoke-free restaurants, even if they benefitted me. I would moreso prefer that smoke-free restaurants exist because the market dictates it wants them by not transacting with smoke-partitioned restaurants.

> everything from the roads, breathable air, a widespread and capable workforce, a dynamic labor market, powerful financial markets, a justice system, fire departments, and lots of consumer protections so we can focus on growth instead of spending all our time trying to research if your bank is actually a scam or if the restaurant down the street washes their hands enough.

There is certainly some gain in being able to outsource research, but it is difficult to determine if it is a net good for society or the individual due to the moral hazard it generates. Not worrying about your bank being a scam allows actual banks to take on outsized risk and then not face any repercussions. It skews the appetite for risk that disproportionately benefits risk takers. For a recent example, see the Silicon Valley Bank failure, which the FEDs totally bailed out to prevent a collapse across many more banks, mostly because those banks overleant at low mortgage rates and couldn't sell the low interest notes at face value after the rise in interest rates, leading to a liquidity crisis.

Focusing on growth comes at a cost; lots of inefficies are introduced. Instead, we could focus on being efficient and low waste and allow the growth to come naturally.

[vel0city]

> due to the moral hazard it generates.

The moral hazard of checks notes mothers breastfeeding and attending to their newborn children and husbands asssisting for a few weeks. Yes. What an absolutely upsidedown society we'll have if we allow such a thing to happen. Terrible. Need to ensure that doesn't happen.

And we need to reduce the rate of this happening to ensure checks notes wealthy people continue producing at high rates to profit the even wealthier.

That so many people have such mindsets and continue to wonder why our birthrates are dropping is astounding.

Wake up buddy. Keep drawing these lines. See where they go. I guess we'll both be dead though, so it doesn't matter.

[immibis]

The people who say they don't want the government to help pay for raising children are the same people who complain about low birth rates. You can't eat your cake and still have it. Would you like sustainable population or would you like low taxes? You can't have both.

Sensible government programs aren't deadweight loss - they are net gains - although a lot of what governments do, especially what the US government does, is not sensible. For example, you pay taxes to have property rights, and I don't think you think that is deadweight loss.

Meanwhile your concern about "why should I pay for someone else?" is literally just insurance but I bet you have insurance, and you only hate insurance when the government does it.

[hellojesus]

> is literally just insurance but I bet you have insurance, and you only hate insurance when the government does it.

Yes. This is exactly right. And that is because private insurance allows people to voluntarily consume it. Not everyone has the same appetite for risk. Allow people to maximize their individual utility!

[trealira]

>Why should I have to pay for Debbie across the country to have a kid? Or Fred across the state?

It's a net benefit to society encourage people to have kids and keep the number of births closer to replacement rate.

[hellojesus]

I don't think it's reasonable to steal from some for the betterment of others. Clearly if those from which money is taken maximized their utility by charitably giving it away to familes with newborns, this policy wouldn't be necessary. To that end, this policy creates deadweight loss for those from whom the redistributive policy takes more than it returns.

[trealira]

> Clearly if those from which money is taken maximized their utility by charitably giving it away to familes with newborns, this policy wouldn't be necessary.

>To that end, this policy creates deadweight loss for those from whom the redistributive policy takes more than it returns.

First, clearly such people don't donate to families, making that a pointless argument, and second, even if they gave new parents money directly, they might still not have a baby if they don't have time to take care of the baby without parental leave. Long work hours for couples decreasing the national birth rate is a negative externality. If all companies acted hostile to parents and no one became a parent, that might boost each individual company's productivity levels, but they would be killing off the workforce in the long term. That, like overfishing, would be an example of the tragedy of the commons.

[hellojesus]

> First, clearly such people don't donate to families, making that a pointless argument, and second, even if they gave new parents money directly

Yes. That is my point. Theft is required to execute this policy, which defines the deadweight loss.

I argue that companies may offer better leave benefits in order to attract workers. My company provides six weeks for primary and two for secondary caretakers.

Amazon gives a month or something like that. Clearly I would have incentive to work there if I could, and by that I mean others better skilled than me fill those vacancies. The policy is effective.

[collingreen]

"All taxation is theft!" is a funny thing to claim in a world where standing alone is no longer viable.

I have a lot of libertarian tendencies but shouting that you're being robbed (from the safety of your stable, productive, society that protects even your right to complain like that) feels childish to me - the actual first step if you're going to act this way seems to be trying to get out from under this government that you never agreed to so you can start doing things your own way. The irony of people who say "if you don't like it, leave" is that they rarely take their own advice.

As a side note, I'm always curious when I see someone say that taxes are theft -- what is "theft" and "property" in your world view without the other systems underpinning it? It seems to always boil down to "stuff in your possession that you can keep someone else from taking away" which always boils down to violence at the end. Does " theft" even make sense in this context and, if so, did you "steal" everything first? It always seems like such a "rules for thee but not for me" kind of claim so I'm (genuinely) curious if you have a more substantial platform for your libertarianism.

[hellojesus]

The libertarian bent typically suggests that the government must be funded to the extent that it can protect private property. This means it must be able to recognize private property and litigate against its theft, including bodily harm. Therefore I shout from my safe stable, but my prerequisite is that the government exists to provide that safe stable.

It also exists to provide public goods, which are defined as nonrivalous and nonexcludable, such as national defense (where I would only suggest it be provided insofar as the workforce be entirely voluntary).

Redistributibe policies such as PFML or universal healthcare, are indeed theft. You take from Person A to give to Person B when Person A would otherwise not do so. Please help me understand how that is not theft?

[collingreen]

Thanks for the answer and that makes sense for your perspective - government is pretty much just there for you to be able to lay claim to things and all other benefits should be done by explicitly optted-in individuals.

I don't think it's helpful for me to try to take a position about what is and isn't theft by governments you were born into but wish you weren't. I don't even know how to start untangling that one and I think perspective overwhelms any reason there anyway.

I do appreciate your response about my question - very helpful!

[hellojesus]

Thanks, I appreciate that.

I want to be more progressive. I really do! It feels good because typically you get to provide for the less fortunate. But my atomic unit is the individual, and I can't seem to make my belief system reconcile individual liberty and government-enforced charity. That's why I come here sometimes. It helps me talk through things and try to find counterexamples to my ideology.

I appreciate everyone's time and discussions.

[lokar]

What do you think your retirement savings represent? They are a claim on goods and services to be produced by a future generation. For that to work there has to be a future generation of sufficient productive capacity. If population declines faster then productivity increases the system will collapse.

Look at what is happening to South Korea.

[hellojesus]

That is part of the risk one must take into account when investing. The same happens regardless of population; you must invest where you expect there to still exist market demand in the future.

[lokar]

If the productive capacity of the economy declines your capital will be inflated away. Money is a social construct built on a stable or growing economy.

[hellojesus]

The FED can target either interest rates or the money supply. It could very well adjust supply to meet a shrinking population pool. Otherwise post war losses of many able bodied men would inflate away economies.

[lokar]

Either way you won’t be able to obtain the goods and services you saved for, there just won’t be enough of them.

[hellojesus]

There could be. Our example hasn't considered productivity gains due to capital improvements or tech advancements. We may not need the same population to produce the samd product count in the future.

[mindslight]

You're missing the elephant in the room that our society doesn't have enough distributed wealth to allow most people to pay for their own time off.

I too hate the top-down prescriptivism of narrow "benefit" policies administered by employers. But until we fix the economy so most people have the market power to tell their employer they're taking 3-6+ months off for $whatever, have the savings to pay for it, and be confident that that either their employer will want them back at the end or that they will be able to find a different employer, then it's what we're stuck with. So if you really want to reform this, then work towards fixing wealth inequality.

(The healthcare thing is a politically radioactive topic. It would be fantastic to prevent employers anticompetitively bundling healthcare with employment, but it would take a lot of political capital to rise above fearmongering to people with "good" employer plans and the desire of politicians to lean on the current system out of expedience)

[hellojesus]

I understand your point, but I am unable to reconcile the inefficiencies introduced by redistributive policies. I would instead prefer a charitable system whereby people voluntarily provide funds to be allocated to new parents to afford them the time off for caretaking.

[mindslight]

You're ignoring the current overriding redistributive policy of continually printing a large amount of new money (monetary inflation), and handing most of it to the banks to give away to asset holders. This siphons real wealth away from the edges of our society, and is a significant contributor to wealth inequality.

If you focus on smaller instances of redistributive policies without addressing that, you've done the equivalent of admitting a logical contradiction to your axioms and thus are able to come to some decidedly anti-individual-freedom conclusions. In this case, further turning the financial screws on the edges.

[hellojesus]

I don't mind turning back the Keynesian dials and abolishing the federal reserve. The reason my discussion is focused on PFML and universal healthcare is because that was the topic of the OP to which I replied at the root of my comment chain.

Those two are also not current or longstanding federal policy, which should making their prevention far easier than their repeal.

[mindslight]

> I don't mind turning back the Keynesian dials and abolishing the federal reserve. The reason my discussion is focused on PFML and universal healthcare is because that was the topic of the OP to which I replied at the root of my comment chain.

The point is that without actually doing the former, your point in isolation on the latter comes across as completely out of touch. Currently, the vast majority of people simply do not have the kind of wealth required to make a decision like you're advocating. As it stands, the financial treadmill is a fixed quantity - so in that context, what you're effectively advocating is for people to not have the time to have kids, period.

> Those two are also not current or longstanding federal policy, which should making their prevention far easier than their repeal.

Yes, that is exactly the problem! When you push everywhere with a justification of individual freedom, the places you tend to actually move forward are where you're actually serving an agenda of entrenched centralized power. For example, look at this individual-liberty-appealing "fiscal responsibility" refrain of the past 30 years - it ended up facilitating all that newly-printed money to be given away to banks / asset holders, rather than say purposefully spent making sure our industrial base wasn't getting completely hollowed out. It was basically a kayfabe for looting, and not supporting individual freedom at all.

In a perfect world I would have preferred if that new money hadn't been created in the first place, and that wealth had remained distributed throughout society rather than centrally collected and then centrally assigned. But that wasn't anywhere close to being on the table. So we have to be real about the actual results of the specific policies we're advocating for, lest we become patsies helping to destroy individual liberty.