[stretchwithme]

I agree. One cannot just look back at all the things that have happened and conclude they are right because you have prospered. We have, or some do, the capacity to think in principles and what things actually provide real benefit.

I happen to think people are more generous when they are free to be successful and they aren't bled to death.

Even with the high taxes in the US, I read that charitable contributions are up around $300 billion.

And private charity has some incentives that are absent in government charity. People are actually more careful with their own money. And when the results are obviously bad, they change what they are doing.

The federal government has let many bad things happen for decades before addressing them. The disastrous public housing projects. Welfare that destroys the work ethic. It eventually changed course on these things, but not without much political wrangling. A private donor would move to change it after seeing the evidence.

Worse still is the total lack of gratitude and sense of entitlement that many recipients of public money seem to have. I feel most people when receiving a gift from a private donor would say please and thank you. And if the private donor could not continue to give for some reason, they'd say thank you just the same, not harass them.

[potatolicious]

Your comment bothers me in very fundamental ways, though this is far from the first time I have seen this sentiment.

At the core of it is that your entire position is based around supposition - notice the generous use of "I feel that... would...", "I happen to think", and pointing out a lot of theories - that people would spend private charity differently than government charity, that welfare destroys the work ethic, that public housing would not have been implemented if the money was in private charitable hands, that people who receive public money are ingrates, etc.

Where is the empiricism that we hackers pride ourselves in? Your entire position is based on your personal behavioral model of how people think, that isn't verified against copious observations from around the world. This is, I think, a long-winded way of saying "citation desperately needed" and drawing big bold underlines beneath it.

Have you actually talked to a substantial number of welfare recipients to know that they generally do feel a "total lack of gratitude and sense of entitlement"? Or, pardon the bluntness, is that entirely a personal assumption?

[tolmasky]

I think you're right without realizing it: the actual criticism is that the onus of proof is on the one proposing the program in question. If there is a random government program X (and I'm not referring to welfare, it can be any program), it should not be allowed to continue without sufficient proof that it is making a positive difference. The reality is that most programs are not backed by much evidence since such evidence is really hard to get or even impossible. We can't really scientifically test how things would happen without program X (and all other things being equal) in either direction. I completely agree that I do not know how much program x actually subtly hurts the economy/society/whatever in the same way you cannot know how much it really helps. Everyone's personal intuition guides them to feel that certain perceived positive consequences outweigh certain unperceived negative consequences, and thus justifies their belief that in that case correlation is causation, but there is no proof. As such, the position presented often is that "if you're going to use my money, it is up to you to prove that it will actually be used well, not up to me to prove that it won't be used well," in the same way that if you present a new theory of physics it is up to you to prove it, not the rest of the community to disprove it.

The problem is thus precisely as you described it: this is an area endemically (and perhaps fundamentally) lacking empiricism, and arguably one where you can't practically have empiricism. I don't think it's a stretch to argue that most policy positions are supported on blind faith, emotion, and pseudo-science.

A good example of this, to hopefully gain some common ground with you and move away from an emotionally charged discussion on welfare, is patents. There is really absolutely no proof that patents "encourage innovation". It's not even clear how to measure that. There may be tons of studies done, but they are useless as we have no baseline to compare to. We don't know what's not being invented because of patents. Had patents come about naturally as common agreements between corporations, then it really wouldn't be my business to opine, but since instead it is a government policy, supported through my own tax dollars, courts, and "implict agreement" to not break said patents under penalty of law, it is very much justified that I should demand they go away without myself needing to prove much of anything -- on the contrary it is those wishing to continue the patent system that need to offer proofs.

[barrkel]

My gf is a healthcare economist working for LSE. She analyses and evaluates state (UK) interventions based on the data as reported. There is science being done, and often the data are fairly clear. But we live in a democracy, and there are chunks of the population who believe that state charity is a soft touch. Many times it is democracy and politics itself that forces inefficient outcomes.

[stretchwithme]

Theories about what would free people with their freedom don't have to proven. THEY are responsible for them. No one is forcing them to do anything at the point of a gun.

Those advocating the use of force to solve a problem, on the other hand, completely own the results. Just as I would if I decided to force my neighbor to do something if were given the authority to do as I saw fit.

I say "I feel" or "I think" to qualify what my guesses about what people will do because I don't arrogantly assume that I know better than they do how to run their own lives or allocate their scarce resources.

Most people do a fine job without me forcing my views upon them. And would do even better without massive funds being diverted to people that clearly mismanagement many, many things.

[rayiner]

Counterpoint: black people.

The federal government subsidizes Chicago's public schools to the tune of $1 billion. You think private charity would be so generous to a district that's 90% black or Hispanic? You're out of your mind if you do. Whites fought, violently, for 100 years, to keep blacks from integrating into society. When the courts desegregated the cities, whites fled to the suburbs to avoid having to integrate, leaving the urban decay that is a major target of welfare today.

The history of race in this country is an unavoidable prong of the welfare debate, and it really undermines high-minded notions of how great a system of charity could be.

[powertower]

You are making most of that up. There are more than 1 way to look at something, and you seem to be focusing at the smaller part.

There are also "white people" that have ended slavery (something done by every race since the beginning of time), fought for other races giving them full rights, helped integrate those races into their society, made programs that removed barriers to schools and jobs while discriminating against their own kind, and funded integration to the tune of 100s of billions dollars a year (and now a trillion dollars / year).

…Something that no other race has done in the history of the world.

> whites fled to the suburbs to avoid having to integrate

No, that's only part of it, the human part (that likes unity of race, culture and behavior). They also fled because they were scared that crime and violence would follow.

Your blame of the dysfunctions of the black community is seriously misplaced. White people are not responsible for the care of black people anymore than I'm responsible for you having a life. Until you figure this out and stop the blame game, that dysfunction will likely continue.

[rayiner]

The idea that you can inherit money but not obligations is dysfunctional. We who live in the U.S. are the beneficiaries of tremendous investment into the country by Americans who came before us. We either inherited these benefits, having been born here, or bought into them, by choosing to immigrate here. We have inherited their sins as well. I was not born here, but every morning I ride to work on a train line that was built when Jim Crow still reigned in the U.S. and would still reign for another half a century before it was dismantled by the federal government. The obligations incurred by our predecessors are baked into the brick and concrete and steel of the civilization which they built.

The marginalization of blacks in the U.S. is not some academic issue that happened in the long-forgotten past and involved long-forgotten people. At the time my grandfather was starting his medical practice, which would sew the seeds for the prosperity of his family in my own time, blacks in the United States were systematically oppressed, prevented from participating in society or getting an education. This all happened in essentially modern times. George Wallace made his stand to resist integration 16 years after the transistor was invented at Bell Labs, and 5 years after the first integrated circuit was demonstrated at Texas Instruments. It was not that long ago even on the technological time scale, and a blink of an eye on the sociological time scale.

[powertower]

> The idea that you can inherit money but not obligations is dysfunctional.

The idea that white people come from old money that gets passed down from generation to generation is not based in reality. Many whites came here from the peasant class, and stayed this way for centuries. And most still are in this class one way or another.

> We have inherited their sins as well.

Sure, if you ignore every single positive thing white people have done; and if you assume that white people have some type of an agenda to actively discriminate against non-whites (at a greater degree than non-whites do against whites).

But what it really seems like you are saying is that white people in America should feel ashamed and guilty for being white.

That's a personal choice you made for yourself. Don't make it for me.

[eropple]

But what it really seems like you are saying is that white people in America should feel ashamed and guilty for being white.

No, that's not what he's saying, at all. Nowhere has "old money" or "guilt" entered the equation and that you are feeling very defensive does not give you license to put words into his mouth. rayiner (who I often disagree with, but I have to applaud him for this) is saying that people with privilege have responsibilities as well as benefits. You have, and I'm going to use a technical term, a metric fuckton of privilege being born white and male in the United States.

He is saying that you have a responsibility to society to be better with it than to say "fuck you, I've got mine."

[powertower]

> He is saying that you have a responsibility to society to be better with it than to say "fuck you, I've got mine."

As a citizen of the USA I agree that I have a responsibility to my country and society. I just don't agree that you get to decide for me what that responsibility is.

> You have, and I'm going to use a technical term, a metric fuckton of privilege being born white and male in the United States.

Please, be specific about my situation and what you have decided my skin color owes, just don't use nebulous politically-correct terms such as white-privlege ... unless you are trying to end the conversation.

[rayiner]

I didn't say anything about coming from old money, or feeling guilty about being white. Don't put words in my mouth. What I said is that we (in the sense of We the People) have built a civilization, called the United States, and in that process we oppressed the black race for hundreds of years, an oppression that didn't even arguably end more than just several decades ago. We, those who continue this civilization, both benefit from the actions of our predecessors and are bound by their obligations. We don't need to feel personally guilty for those obligations, because we did not personally incur them, but we're no less bound to them then we are to the debt we back by the full faith and credit of the United States or the Constitution we uphold as the supreme law of the land. None of us personally had any hand in any of these things, but that fact does not free us to disregard them.

[eropple]

> The idea that you can inherit money but not obligations is dysfunctional.

I can't upvote this enough, and this in particular reminds me of a Salon article from not that long ago[1]. The rhetoric is a bit much, but the core thrust of the article is sound.

http://www.salon.com/2012/07/01/southern_values_revived/

[encoderer]

> There are also "white people" that have ended slavery

But of the roughly half of the country that wanted to end slavery, about 0.0001% of them actually thought both races were equal. The notion was considered absurd.

Even the "good" ones that thought that possibly, in theory, there could be equality, that was ruined by a century of forced ignorance and illiteracy.

His bigger point -- that there are things a Gov't must do because private charity never could/would, is pretty hard to refute I'd say.

> White people are not responsible for the care of black people anymore than I'm responsible for you having a life.

Read about most of the Black Laws in the northern states. In many states it was ILLEGAL for blacks to move into the state and take up residence -- born free, former slaves, doesn't matter.

A black man couldn't serve on a jury. Worse: A black man couldn't appear as a witness against a white man in open court. So white men could bring any crime they chose against a black man so long as there were no white witnesses.

White people were 100% responsible for the ghetto-fication of the black community because that was the only place black people felt safe.

All sorts of immigrant communities -- even catholics who were largely despised in the antebellum period (gradually getting better after) -- were able to fully integrate themselves into the American fabric and prosper. But not African immigrants. Why do you suppose that is?

You act like slavery was the injustice and, hey, white people freed the slaves. No way dude. It goes far, far past that.

Emancipation was only supported by a majority when the case was made that slaves were being used to build fortification and power the Rebel war machine. Among the majority of Unionists that supported emancipation, most considered it a tactic. Some a strategy. Very few an objective.

We -- caucasians -- built a layer cake of misfortune and discrimination. The fact that it's been 150 years since emancipation is meaningless. We absolutely have a responsibility to right this wrong and it is taking a long, long time.

And no, this doesn't apply to EVERY person of color. Many have achieved great upward mobility. Yes, we have a black President. To them, the idea that we need to provide charity to them is maybe insulting, perhaps indicating that we believe they've been prosperous only because of that charity.

But that doesn't change the burden to continue unwinding the twisted wrong of generations of discrimination.

[eropple]

> No, that's only part of it, the human part (that likes unity of race, culture and behavior). They also fled because they were scared that crime and violence would follow.

So you mean it's precisely that.

[rdl]

I can't really talk about black people, as the entire set of black people I know personally are maybe 10 engineers or other students at school, and a bunch of military people -- none of whom really need charity, are generally upstanding citizens (with flaws, but not much different from anyone else, etc.)

However, I can speak from first-hand knowledge about poor white people from Appalachia (unfortunately). There's substantial federal subsidy there as well, and a lot of it serves to "enable" dysfunction, rather than fix it.

I'd be fine with much smaller flows of money going in if they were tied to demands to actually fix the underlying issues. Building useful (physical or human) infrastructure, fine. Subsidizing loss-making operations temporarily, fine. Removing any pressures to improve, not fine. Which is essentially the same problem with government and NGO charity in places I've seen (Middle East/Central Asia/North Africa), vs. "private" (generally, faith-based, or returning diaspora, but hyper-focused issue based like Gates too) charity.

[late2part]

How's that subsidy working out?

[rayiner]

It at least maintains the pretense of equality of opportunity for those kids. The alternative, a spiral of urban decay tha would leave the great American cities pockets of third world poverty, is not one I could stomach. My family left Bangladesh for a reason, and I love my adopted country for the fact it has no equivalent to the favelas of Rio or the slums of Mumbai.

[deadairspace]

>One cannot just look back at all the things that have happened and conclude they are right because you have prospered.

Absolutely. This is the just world fallacy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis

[scott_w]

If you think taxes are high in the US, perhaps you should come to the UK.