kfl%mx.lcs.mit.edu@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU.UUCP (07/31/86)
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Date: Wed, 23 Jul 86 23:53:00 EDT
From: "Keith F. Lynch" <KFL%MX.LCS.MIT.EDU@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Welfare, crime, business, unions, and freedom (long)
To: ametek!walton@CSVAX.CALTECH.EDU
From: Steve Walton <ametek!walton@csvax.caltech.edu>
On the subjects of welfare and criminals:
(1) I doubt you are qualified to say what persons are capable of
doing while under the influence of drugs.
Wrong. I have been around users of drugs. They know what drugs do
to them. If they choose to take them anyway, they have to accept the
consequences of their actions while on drugs, whether they are able to
control those actions or not.
If I choose to drop bricks from a tall building, I can't control
just where they fall. Perhaps I wanted one to land on my property but
a stray gust of wind causes it to demolish a car and cause an
accident. Am I responsible for that? I would say that I am. Even
though I could not control where the brick would land, I am the one
who dropped it off the building.
Suppose it did land on my property. Would the police then have
reason to arrest me? I would say that they would not. There is
nothing evil about dropping bricks. The crime is wrecking cars and
causing accidents. Similarly, there is nothing evil about taking
drugs. The crimes are robbing, raping, and killing people. Being on
drugs should neither excuse a crime nor constitute a new crime in its
own right.
(2) If criminals make a rational decision to commit crimes,
I didn't say it was a RATIONAL decision, I said it was a VOLUNTARY
decision. Not the same thing at all. RATIONAL means that the
criminal and his neighbors would be better off if they all went around
mugging eachother. I don't believe this would be the case. VOLUNTARY
means that the criminal commits a crime because he freely chooses to
do so. Or because he freely chooses to take drugs that he knows will
make it impossible to control his behavior. The liberal theory seems
to be that crime is caused by economic conditions and has nothing to
do with anyone's free will, except maybe that of the taxpayers.
I do not believe anyone is compelled to commit crimes. People do it
by choice. Most people living in the worst slums never commit any
crimes. Many people who are very well off, who have everything going
for them, throw it all away to take up a life of crime. Ask any
probation or parole officer, or any psychologist, psychiatrist, or
judge. They will tell you that nobody can predict whether an
individual will commit crimes or not. Not by analyzing his
socioeconomic status to ten decimal places. Not by studying his
environment, not by interviewing his relatives and neighbors, not by
analyzing his urine.
they do so because it is their perception that crimes are
their best route to improve their lot.
They may be right. If they don't get caught. I believe I could
probably steal hundreds of thousands from banks via computer without a
chance of being caught. But I don't do it.
The great majority of people will NOT rip off others, even if there
is no way they could ever be suspected of the crime. Our system is
largely built on trust. If a large percentage of people started
writing bad checks, spoofing EFT systems, stealing parked cars, taking
whatever they could whenever they didn't think they would be caught,
life would become much less pleasant. The crime problem is caused by
a tiny minority who just don't give a damn about anyone else. It has
nothing to do with poverty. Do you think the nuts who put cyanide in
tylenol are below the poverty line?
Crime is the choice of the criminals. To prevent it, we have to
make it not worth their while. We have to show our repugnance for
what they do. Saying that crime isn't really their fault but
society's, or that they are ill and in need of treatment, has
precisely the opposite effect.
Having hundreds of thousands of laws, most of which few people have
ever heard of, and many of which criminalize perfectly innocent (even
if unsavory or unwise) behaviors, also sends the wrong message. By
crime, I am talking about murder, robbery, burglary, rape, theft,
espionage, sabotage, vandalism, fraud, arson, assault, and extortion.
I am not talking about prostitution, gambling, selling or using drugs,
pornography, or homosexuality. Those should not be crimes. Some of
them may lead to crime but that doesn't mean they should be crimes,
anymore than it means that a serious crime can be excused by one of
these non-crimes.
Judges routinely show leniency to people who have been using drugs
or alcohol. Some rapists try blame their crimes on pornography.
Sadly, the Meese report may serve to justify their behavior to
themselves, and possibly to judges.
To the extent that societal problems cause racial
discrimination, poor public schools and police protection in
ghettos, and other such conditions, society is responsible for
some crime.
What does it mean for society to be responsible? Do we lock it in
jail? If by society you mean government, perhaps that wouldn't be a
bad idea. :-)
(3) "being PAYED [sic] to have children". The amount of extra
welfare money which is received for another child is small
compared to what it actually costs to raise the child.
That depends on how good a job of raising the child you do.
I am not saying the welfare families are getting rich. I am just
saying that they live comfortably enough that they don't see the need
to change. Why work if you can watch TV all day? Especially if the
only job you can get at the moment is one that pays hardly any better
than welfare. And you lose your free medical insurance for yourself
and your kids, your food stamps, and possibly your subsidized housing.
Since you would have to pay for day care for the kids while you are at
work, it obviously makes much more sense to just sit back and watch
TV.
Note that these people aren't just getting AFDC. They get food
stamps, subsidized transportation, free medical care, and subsidized
housing. The total value of this is considerably greater than many
working people can afford. Once again, we are lucky that so many
people are fundamentally honest. Practically anyone with children who
is in the bottom 20 or 30 percent economically would do better if they
quit their job and lived off government assistance of various forms.
On second thought, perhaps it would be better if they DID do so. Then
things would HAVE to change.
Did you watch the NBC special on the black family which Bill
Moyers did? The problem is quite a bit more complex than
this.
No, I don't have a TV. And if I did, I wouldn't have time to watch
it. I know the problems are complex. I don't see how complexity
justifies government subsidies. Quite the opposite. The more complex
someone's life and problems are, the less likely it is that anyone but
themselves would completely understand them.
I don't see it as a black problem. Most blacks are not on welfare.
Many whites are on welfare. Race really has little to do with it.
It's mostly an attitude problem.
(3) "Watch TV all day and count the welfare checks" is a wonderful
buzz phrase, calculated to produce an emotional response, but
it has no grounds in fact.
Wrong. I *KNOW* people like this.
Most welfare money goes to people who are the victims of
circumstance, and most of them would take a job if they could
get one.
Too many people see themselves as victims of circumstance, or of
forces beyond their control. Trapped in a world they never made.
Wallowing in self pity. I could get into that. You think my life has
been all roses? Closer to all thorns. Seven years ago I was released
from prison after serving a sentence for burglary. (I was innocent.)
I had 25 dollars to my name. And a bus ticket and a new suit. If
that doesn't make me a victim of circumstance I don't know what does.
If I had then turned to a life of crime and moaned about how an ex-con
doesn't have a chance, I am sure I would have your symapthy. You would
eagerly agree that I was blameless and that it was all society's fault.
But I didn't do that. I worked long and hard and now work for a high
technology company. I'm not wealthy, but I do manage to save over a
third of my after tax salary.
Unfortunately, none of the jobs are in neighborhoods they can
afford to commute or move to.
Wrong. There are plenty of jobs in the inner city. Small
apartments are no more expensive in the suburbs than in the city. Bus
and/or subway service connects the two, at a cost that even people
making minimum wage can afford. And people can live on as little as
$200 a month if they are willing to share apartments and eat cheap
foods.
Also, there are a lot of farm jobs going begging. People just don't
want to get their hands dirty.
I am just not aware of anyone who HAS TO commit crimes to survive or
to feed their children. Not in this country. Stealing hubcaps may be
more lucrative and more exciting than washing dishes. Checking the
obituary pages and burglarizing a family's house while they are at a
funeral may be a faster route to a large bank account than picking
vegetables. Does this justify crime? Is it the fault of government
for not making the minimum wage and the welfare minumum as much as
someone could get by spending his time tunneling into bank vaults?
On the subject of business:
... The employer-employee relationship is NOT symmetrical in the
absence of unions, because employers can deprive an employee of
his/her livelihood, but an individual employee cannot do the same
to an employer.
Wrong again. An employer's only power is the power to fire the
employee. This does not deprive the employee of his livelihood, since
he is free to find another employer or to become self-employed.
Similarly, an employee's only power over his employer is (or rather
should be) the power to resign. This does not deprive the employer of
HIS livelihood, since the employer is free to find another employee to
replace the one who resigned, or to work without employees. It is
perfectly symmetrical.
It can be a considerable inconvenience losing a job. Being fired
can be as traumatic as being divorced. Saying 'one can always find
another job' may sound as callous as saying 'one can always find
another spouse'. But it is true. And if one can't, why should
taxpayers be required to pay? Nobody seems to object to divorce laws
becoming more symmetrical, so why object to employment laws becoming
more symmetrical?
For an employer to lose an employee can be traumatic as well. Major
corporations have gone out of business simply because one or more
employees left when they were badly needed.
What people don't seem to understand about laws that make it
difficult for people to be fired is that they make it equally
difficult for people to be hired. Much of the difficulty that people
do have in finding jobs is simply the flip side of the minimum wage
laws and the many other laws that make life difficult for employers.
When workers attempted to exercise their right to freely assemble
by forming unions, the government shot them.
I hope you don't think I support that! Nobody should ever be shot
at unless they shoot first.
The fact that members of labor unions got a raw deal many years ago
does not imply that members of labor unions should now have any
special rights (i.e. rights not posessed by non-members). I doubt
that any of the current members were around when these shootings
occured anyway.
Your ideal libertarian free market only exists in cases where it
is easy to enter a new line of work if profits (wages) cease in an
old one.
Not only where it is EASY, but where it is POSSIBLE. There is no
guarantee that life must be easy. Most of the people who are newly
out of work, i.e. steel mill and automobile industry employees, were
making a very respectable salary for many years. If such a person
fails to invest much of his money, but instead spends it on a grand
lifestyle, I have very little sympathy when the bottom falls out of
the market. For many years they were making money way out of line
with the value of the products and services they were producing,
thanks to extortion by the labor unions. Their employers shrugged
their shoulders and passed the excess costs on to the consumers. The
result was greatly overpriced cars, steel, and buildings. Why should
the employers bother to fight it? They would probably get their
facilities torched by union goons. They aren't losing any business,
since their competitors have the same problems. And nobody is
actually harmed. Except the consumers, who are paying way too much
for cars, etc.
The foreign competition started easily underselling the unionized
firms. The unions flex their muscles and cry foul. "Dumping" they
say. Nobody can possibly be making a profit selling cars or steel for
that little, they argue. They never explain why any company or
country would be throwing money away by selling goods for less than it
cost to make them, or why it wouldn't be a net benefit to people in
the US to buy the inexpensive goods whether the goods were being
dumped or not.
It made me really angry when I heard about the 'voluntary' import
quotas. Just when it looked like the average person would soon be
able to afford a new car it all fell apart. Detroit is still firmly
in charge. I just hope the union members think about the lives that
are destroyed by accidents caused by obsolete vehicles. I just hope
they realize that this political pressure game is no game, but that
there are innocent people being badly hurt.
I feel even less sympathy for the oil barons of the southwest, who
are now feeling the bad effects of the oil price decline. They had
little mercy for the rest of us when oil prices were skyrocketing.
Now they want government subsidies, handout, guaranteed price floors.
It IS possible to enter a new line of work. I am not saying it is
always easy. Sometimes it even requires learning new skills. How
much easier to have the government or the consumers simply subsidize
your continuing to perform your old job to nobody's benefit. Often,
taking a new job means making a lot less money, and losing your house
with the $2000 mortgage payments and your shiny new BMW. So what?
Should those of us who have never lived like royalty suffer even
higher taxes to keep this guy in his house?
It is a little known fact, but most government transfer payments
(AFDC, Social Security, food stamps, various subsidies) actually go to
people wealthier than they come from. The government is no Robin
Hood, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. On the average
it is just the opposite. Not that I think it would be justified even
if it ran the way it supposedly does.
The citizens of the US decided during the New Deal that it was a
proper function of government to provide minimum protection to
people trapped by circumstances beyond their control
SOME citizens decided this. Even if it was the majority, does that
make it right? The majority supported slavery at one time.
Individuals have certain rights that cannot be subsumed to the
tyranny of the majority.
The cost of this minimum protection is enough to bankrupt the
nation. The federal government is nearly two trillion dollars in debt
and rapidly getting deeper into debt. Nearly all of this can be
attributed to social spending, not to defense. When you take into
account the fact that about half the money spent for defense returns
at once in the form of taxes, and when you count social security,
medicare, and medicaid as part of the social budget rather than being
completely seperate from the federal budget, and when you attribute
the VA and military pensions to the social budget rather than the
defense budget, and when you count state and local taxes, none of
which go to defense, you will discover that defense only takes up 16%
of tax revenues. Certainly that should be reduced, but defense is not
THE problem. Taxes could be cut to 1/4 of their current amount if
social spending was abolished. And I don't just mean federal income
taxes but ALL taxes. Add up just how much extra money that would be
for you. Probably it would be even greater savings for your employer
and your landlord, which would both pass on most of their savings to
employees and tenants to remain competitive. Can you imagine suddenly
being this much wealthier? Can you imagine EVERYONE suddenly being
this much wealthier? What wonders it would do for business, for
consumer spending. Most people could buy a new car with one year's
tax savings.
A small amount of this windfall would be given voluntarily to the
one percent of the population who are permanently truly needy and the
two percent of the population who are temporarily truly needy. And to
anyone else who can make a good case that they should receive
voluntary donations. These percentages would probably shrink even
further if people would stop reciting 'I am trapped by circumstances
beyond my control' to themselves. People who are blind and deaf have
lived productive and rewarding lives. People raised in orphanages
have made great discoveries. People with no legs have won skiing
trophies. People with no arms have become millionaires. People
foolish enough to become addicted to drugs have stopped using them and
gone on to live useful long and healthy lives. People sentenced to
death in high security prisons have escaped.
You seem to share common misconceptions about the New Deal. Nothing
like that would have been allowed by the citizens except that there
was a terrible depression at the time. The depression was caused by
government meddling in the free market. The New Deal did not end the
depression, it made it worse. World War II ended the depression. The
New Deal policies have been a constant major drag on the economy ever
since.
Our technology is light years beyond that of the 1920s. Worker's
efficiencies have doubled, doubled again, and doubled again. Farm
productivity is up by a factor of ten. Electric power available to
the average person has increased by a factor of 100. Computer power,
by a factor of several trillion. So why do we seem to be only a
little wealthier and happier than people were in the 1920s? And in
some ways we are worse off. The average family in 1926 could afford a
house and a new car. The average family in 1986 can afford neither.
How do you explain this?
-------walton@ametek.UUCP.UUCP (07/31/86)
Return-Path: <ametek!walton@csvax.caltech.edu> Date: Thu, 24 Jul 86 10:04:13 pdt From: Steve Walton <ametek!walton@csvax.caltech.edu> Subject: Welfare, crime, business, unions, and freedom (long) Well, it seems I touched a nerve. :-) Let me discuss a few points with minimal quoting from your letter, which I greatly enjoyed. You are correct that one is often "better off" under welfare today, because the current benefit structure is such that you lose more than $1 of benefits for every $1 you earn at a job. However, the numbers show that the majority of means-tested benefit programs (which should be distinguished from non-means-tested entitlement programs such as veterans' benefits and Social Security) go to people who cannot work, mainly unskilled mothers with small children whose fathers have split. We all know people who are stealing from the government, including people who "watch TV all day and count the welfare checks." This is anecdotal evidence of abusers of a system, and proves nothing about the general utility, or lack thereof, of that system. The current welfare system is, indeed, an active disincentive to finding useful employment, and must be either fixed or scrapped. Whether it can be fixed awaits the outcome of such experiments as California's new "workfare" program. It really is possible to be a victim of circumstance. I admire your success since your release from prison; it doesn't change the fact that there are people who have applied for more than 100 jobs, re- ceiving one interview and no job, and have given up looking. (Actual name of this person can be found on the front page of the July 21 LA Times, which I don't have handy at the moment.) I am also not aware of anyone who "HAS TO commit crimes to survive" in this country. You suggest that crimes would decrease if crime was less lucrative and exciting. How do you suggest we do that? We already spend a larger percentage of our national wealth on law enforcement, and have a larger percentage of our population in prision, than any other democracy. And they are not in there for the victimless "crimes," which I agree should not be illegal, but for crimes against other persons and others' property. Business and employees: The relationship between an *individual* employer and employee is not symmetrical. Employers have, in the past, not only fired employees but tagged them as "troublemakers," thus preventing them from getting jobs anywhere else. They also paid workers a barely adequate living wage, which meant they couldn't afford to strike, or put money aside and quit, in order to protest low wages, or unsafe working conditions. When, despite these odds, workers started to band together in unions, the coercive powers of business and government (the two being nearly identical in those days) were used to prevent this. In the book I recommended in my last posting, William Manchester's "The Glory and the Dream," he offers another explanation for the Great Depression. Manchester, reflecting a middle-of-the-road consensus of economists, concludes that it was due to low wages. Industry showed spectacular productivity gains from 1900 to 1929, but wages remaind relatively constant. The result was that those who were manufacturing the cars and refrigerators couldn't afford to buy them. They bought them anyway, on credit terms which they couldn't meet. The problem was compounded by low farm product prices, the result of overproduction, which meant that farmers couldn't afford industrial products either. When it turned out that most people couldn't afford the payments on their debts, the banks and then the economy collapsed. Note that NONE of this was the result of government action or inaction. In fact, the top income tax rate was dropped from 65% to 25% in 1925, which today's economic thinking says should have generated an enormous boom. (If all of this sounds familiar, perhaps it should.) Before 1929, there was a regular crash every 20 to 30 years; they called it the "business cycle." There hasn't been another one since the New Deal. While correlation is not cause and effect, I think a fair case can be made that this one is. When unions demanded a fair share of their company's profits, and won them after years of battles, it created the middle class in this country. We avoided the socialism of Europe because of, not in spite of, our labor unions. (I must credit a George Will commentary on ABC of about a year ago for these thoughts.) At the time, they were simply asking for a share in the productivity gains which they had helped bring about. Now, of course, they ask for wage increases even when their productivity goes down. Senator Bill Bradley of NJ recently suggested that fixed wages be scrapped in favor of giving workers some minimal wage plus a share in the company's profits, an idea which I think has much merit. TODAY'S labor unions are, to quote Prof. Lance Davis of Caltech, monopolistic corporations whose product is labor. This does not change their mainly positive contributions to American life. You are absolutely correct about the current state of the auto and steel industries, and the negative effects of import quotas on the economy. And I certainly share your lack of sympathy with people who were sporting "Drive 85--freeze a Yankee" bumper stickers a few years ago. Most government transfer payments, such as Social Security, go to the middle class, but such "entitlement" programs must be carefully distinguished from "means-tested" programs such as food stamps and AFDC. I don't know what the total amount being spent on means-tested programs at all levels of government are, but I'm quite sure its a tiny fraction of the $350 billion which the Social Security system hands out every year, to say nothing of government pensions which often exceed what employees at the same level as the retiree's receive. So, your comment about the amount which taxes would drop if social spending were eliminated is true even if welfare is excluded. But I am not sure that voluntary contributions would in fact adequately provide for "the 1% who are permanently truly needy and the 2% who are temporarily truly needy." However, it is in fact possible to be a victim of circumstance. Your 2% of the population who are temporarily truly needy is 5 million people, or roughly 1.5 million families. Coincidentally (?), about 1 million Americans are classed by the Labor Department as "discouraged workers," meaning that they have tried hard and been unable to find a job. Loss of a job is not merely "traumatic" to a family with only one wage earner. What are they to eat while another job is found, or retraining obtained? Your analogy to divorce is interesting, since another large component of government aid recipients is wives whose husbands recently left them, and who have no job skills and are given custody of the children. Consider widows in similar circumstances. We, as a society, have made the value judgement that such people should not have to sell their homes and cars (which are usually old VW's not new BMW's) and live in abject poverty until such time as employment can be found again. Rather, we have decided that tax revenues (which are largely voluntary--it is laughably easy to cheat the IRS) should be used to prevent such poverty. You disagree with this value judgement; I agree with it, and I don't think that either of us can change the other's mind. If you don't have time to watch TV (I don't own one either), I'm surprised you have time to read, or write, diatribes like this one. Steve -------
king@KESTREL.ARPA (08/05/86)
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 86 10:04:13 pdt
From: Steve Walton <ametek!walton@csvax.caltech.edu>
. . .
It really is possible to be a victim of circumstance. I admire
your success since your release from prison; it doesn't change the
fact that there are people who have applied for more than 100 jobs,
receiving one interview and no job, and have given up looking.
(Actual name of this person can be found on the front page of the
July 21 LA Times, which I don't have handy at the moment.)
Does seem a bit rough.
Er, why did he quit looking? What does he do instead?
. . .
Business and employees: The relationship between an *individual*
employer and employee is not symmetrical. Employers have, in the
past, not only fired employees but tagged them as "troublemakers,"
thus preventing them from getting jobs anywhere else.
Employees have, in the past (and present), not only resigned their
positions but tagged their former employees as troublemakers. As an
example, messages circulated around the net a while ago that a company
named EDS was miserable to work for.
If you don't have time to watch TV (I don't own one either), I'm
surprised you have time to read, or write, diatribes like this one.
I have time to do anything that takes less than 168 hours per week.
When I, and I presume other people, say "I don't have time to do X", I
macroexpand it to "There exist 168 hours of activity per week to which
I give higher priority than X".
Steve
-dick
-------eyal@wisdom.BITNET (08/15/86)
I'm not sure whether this article made it through the first time I sent it (there were some problem on the BITNET line to the USA), so I'm sending it again. >Business and employees: The relationship between an *individual* >employer and employee is not symmetrical. Employers ... paid >workers a barely adequate living wage, which meant they couldn't >afford to strike, or put money aside and quit, in order to protest >low wages, or unsafe working conditions. The wages an employer pays don't depend on the arbitrary decision of either him or his workers; they depend on the productivity of labor, which depends mostly on the technology used. An increase in labor productivity always causes an increase in real wages, and it is the ONLY way to bring about such an increase for all workers. An employer can't arbitrarily decide to pay his workers less than their productivity justifies (the obvious example is Henry Ford, who introduced methods which increased the productivity of labor, and then paid his workers $5 a day - about twice the prevailing wages at the time; you can bet he wasn't moved by kindness or generosity), and he also can't arbitrarily decide to pay them more without going out of business. When technological conditions were such that labor productivity was low, then wages necessarily had to be barely adequate by today's standards (though compared to the earnings of agricultural workers, or of workers in Europe, during the same period, they were quite high); working conditions had to be unsafe, since the expense of making them safer would have lowered wages even further; the only alternative was to give better wages and conditions to SOME of the workers, while firing the others, forcing them to either seek work in other industries at even worse conditions or become unemployed - and that's the ONLY result unions ever achieved. The two best books about unions, examining both history and economic theory, are Emerson P. Schmidt's "Union Power and the Public Interest" and Morgan O. Reynold's "Power and Privilege". >In the book I recommended in my last posting, William Manchester's >"The Glory and the Dream," he offers another explanation for the >Great Depression. ... those who were manufacturing >the cars and refrigerators couldn't afford to buy them. They bought >them anyway, on credit terms which they couldn't meet. ... >When it turned out that most people couldn't afford >the payments on their debts, the banks and then the economy >collapsed. Note that NONE of this was the result of government >action or inaction. The only way a large number of people can get more credit than they can meet is if credit is made artificially easy by the government; that's exactly what happened in the 20's. For an excellent economic history of this period, I recommend Benjamin Anderson's "Economics and the Public Welfare". >In fact, the top income tax rate was dropped from 65% to >25% in 1925, which today's economic thinking says should have >generated an enormous boom. Not if accompanied by irresponsible manipulation of money and credit. >We, as a society, have made the value judgement that such people >should not have to sell their homes and cars (which are usually old >VW's not new BMW's) and live in abject poverty until such time as >employment can be found again. First of all, the only cause of prolonged, general unemployment is those labor unions you're so much in favor of - so you're using one problem caused by government intervention to justify more intervention. Second, when you say "we, as a society, have made the value judgment", what you really mean is that some people made it at other people's expense. >Rather, we have decided that tax >revenues (which are largely voluntary--it is laughably easy to cheat >the IRS) Oh, come on! When you take someone's money at the threat of imprisonment, then it is not voluntary, no matter how easy you claim it is to "cheat". >should be used to prevent such poverty. You disagree with >this value judgement; I agree with it, and I don't think that either >of us can change the other's mind. Which boils down to: you don't have any reasons for this "value judgment", it's just a capricious whim, but you want it enforced on everybody. Eyal Mozes BITNET: eyal@wisdom CSNET and ARPA: eyal%wisdom.bitnet@wiscvm.ARPA UUCP: ...!ihnp4!talcott!WISDOM!eyal -------