kfl%mx.lcs.mit.edu@MX.LCS.MIT.EDU.UUCP (07/31/86)
Return-Path: <@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU:KFL%MX.LCS.MIT.EDU@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 86 01:50:48 EDT
From: "Keith F. Lynch" <KFL%MX.LCS.MIT.EDU@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Welfare
To: ametek!walton@CSVAX.CALTECH.EDU
From: Steve Walton <ametek!walton@csvax.caltech.edu>
... the majority of means-tested benefit programs ... go to people
who cannot work, mainly unskilled mothers with small children
whose fathers have split.
I am not convinced that these people are unable to work.
Most of these fathers have split in order to make the mothers
eligible for these programs. Thus these programs are viciously
anti-family, and are responsible for the breakup of more families than
slavery.
We all know people who are stealing from the government, including
people who "watch TV all day and count the welfare checks."
I wasn't speaking of people who were cheating, but of those who are
using the system legally. Though there are plenty of cheaters, too.
The current welfare system ... must be either fixed or scrapped.
Whether it can be fixed awaits the outcome of such experiments
as California's new "workfare" program.
Well, that is better than regular welfare at least. Though I don't
think it is up to government to find work or to make work for these
people.
There are a lot of problems with mixing welfare with work. Read
Busby's Rissa Kerguelen trilogy for a view of a future society in
which the majority of the population ends up on welfare, working for
the state.
An example of workfare taken to its logical extreme is the Soviet
Union. They truthfully boast that unemployment is zero. The Soviet
government guarantees everyone a job. But I don't hear the unemployed
of this country clamoring to emigrate there.
It really is possible to be a victim of circumstance.
A lot less possible than most people think. Every victim of
circumstance I know of has simply chosen to be one. They will never
get rich, but they have an easy life ahead of them. Why not?
What about all the immigrants who came here with nothing, not even
speaking or reading English, and are now doing quite well? This isn't
just something that happened hundreds of years ago. At work we had a
party last week to celebrate the naturalization of an employee who
escaped from Laos on a boat three years ago. She spoke no English
then, but now speaks better than a lot of inner city types who have
lived in the US all their life. She taught herself to type, and is
now married to a fellow refugee and has a good job.
There was an article in last month's Reader's Digest about a woman
who couldn't read or write. She was determined to become a doctor, so
she studied hard and worked hard and now has her medical degree.
There are many cases of people missing eyes, hands, arms, and legs,
being very productive. Robert Heinlein was declared permanently and
totally disabled over 40 years ago. Since then, he has made several
million dollars. He says "that scrap of paper wore out, but I
didn't".
... there are people who have applied for more than 100 jobs, re-
ceiving one interview and no job, and have given up looking.
They should talk to a friend or relative about what they are doing
wrong in the interviews.
More common is the case of a person who interviews at three to five
places, waiting until they get a firm 'no' from each place (which
often never happens) before interviewing at the next place. And then
giving up.
Also common are people who are out of synch. They apply for summer
jobs in June when they are all taken.
You suggest that crimes would decrease if crime was less lucrative
and exciting. How do you suggest we do that?
I am sure it would. But I don't see any practical way to do that,
and didn't suggest that we try.
What WILL help is if we make crimes MORE exciting, i.e. if more
people are armed, burglary will soon become a thing of the past. If
more people are trained in self defense, there will be less mugging.
One thing that engenders crime is the high cost of illegal drugs.
If all drugs are legalized, the price will fall. Also, there will be
a lot fewer dangerous overdoses since the purity will be much more
standard. Perhaps most importantly, legalizing all forms of vice will
put organized crime out of business for good.
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.
Sad but true. Juries need to be a lot more hardheaded. Most juries
today are willing to fall for any harebrained expert testimony theory.
For instance the case of that guy in San Fransisco who got a very
light sentence for murder because he was under the influence of
Hostess Twinkies (!). Or Patty Hearst, who got a relatively light
sentence for armed bank robbery because she was 'brainwashed'. Some
women have literally gotten away with murder by pleading PMS (i.e.
that time of month). That should do wonders for women's rights. And
don't forget 'insane' Hinckley. Or 'suffered enough' Nixon.
Judges also have this problem. There was a case three years ago
here in Virginia in which the same judge who sentenced me to six
years, suspended a twenty year jury sentence for a convicted rapist
and let him off with probation! This circuit court judge has since
been promoted to the Virginia Supreme court.
Also, juries tend to put to much weight in the prosecution's
arguments if the defendant is not being well represented. People are
serving life sentences for rape, on the sole testimony of the victim.
In one recent case, the 'victim' 'found Christ' and admitted she made
the whole thing up. A man here in Virginia is serving a 40 year
sentence for posession on one ounce of marijuana. A man in Oklahoma
got 99 years for indecent exposure.
Is it any wonder that the crime rate and the incarceration rate are
both so high? Sentences should be much more uniform. The chances of
an innocent person being locked up must be reduced. The chances of a
guilty person going free must be reduced, but not at the expense of
the former.
And they are not in there for the victimless "crimes," which I
agree should not be illegal ...
A lot are there for selling drugs. Maybe forty percent are there
for crimes committed to support their drug habit. Many justify their
crimes by pointing out how unfair the system is, especially in regards
to wealthy and white collar criminals.
They claim that everyone commits crimes, it's just that the
businessmen know how to get away with it. This may just be sour
grapes, but many seem to be utterly convinced of it. Morality is
equated in their minds with obviously bogus religious fundamentalism.
They just have no conception of a true, humanistic, morality. What
does it mean to be told that robbery is a serious crime, when they are
also told that viewing pornography is a serious crime?
Also, a lot of them had no idea prison would be as bad as it is.
The news media have failed to convey just how awful it truly is.
There are no simple answers to the crime problem. On the whole, I
would say it is up to each individual to not commit crimes (I have
little sympathy for those who do commit crimes and then complain of
the unpleasantness of the consequences) and to protect himself and his
property from crime. I wish more people were armed.
Crime has many bad consequences, some of which are obvious, and some
of which I hadn't realized before my imprisonment. For instance a
crime demands a suspect, and the police get the wrong guy more often
than you might suspect. Does a burglar consider the enormous cost to
someone of their being held responsible for his crime, when he breaks
into a house?
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," ...
Similarly, an employee or ex-employee can tag his employer as a
trouble spot. There are in fact several companies I would not
consider working for, simply because of what people who work there
have said about the working conditions. Symmetry.
When ... workers started to band together in unions, the coercive
powers of business and government ... were used to prevent this.
I oppose government coercion just as strongly whether it is
exercised on the side of big business (as it frequently was late in
the last century) or on the side of big unions (as it frequently is
today).
In the book ... another explanation for the Great Depression.
There are many explanations. I firmly believe the libertarian one.
If I see this book in paperback I will buy it. But I doubt he has
any evidence that will change my mind.
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.
Huh? What about all these random recessions? They don't compare to
the 1930s, but then neither did anything before 1929.
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.
Well, I am not too familiar with social classes. I try not to think
in those terms. But it was my understanding that the working class,
as contrasted with the middle class, has been associated with unions.
And the large middle class supposedly dates back to the renaissance.
We avoided the socialism of Europe because of, not in spite of,
our labor unions.
Well, this is a classic arguing technique. FOO may be bad, but it
prevented BAR which is worse. Didn't the Nazis argue this way with
regard to communism? America is getting a lot of enemies thanks to
our unfortunate policy of supporting really bad governments simply
because they aren't communist.
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.
I too think it has much merit. But it should be up to the employer
and empolyee, not up to the governmnent. There is a profit sharing
plan where I work, in addition to 'fixed' wages. Also, each
employee's wages are subject to review and revision once each year,
based on his performance, which is another thing unions tend to
disaprove of.
An AT&T supervisor told me that during the recent AT&T strike, each
supervisor was able to do the work of five union employees. The union
employees have no incentive to work productively.
Unions also tend to oppose automation and other techniques of
improving productivity. Even to the extent of mandating
'featherbedding' (compelling companies to pay people for obsolete
jobs, for instance having a man to hold the horses at a truck plant,
or to operate an automatic elevator).
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.
There may have been positive contributions many years ago. What
have they done recently? Anything to justify them having a government
supported monopoly status to the unquestioned detriment of the rest of
the economy?
Most government transfer payments, such as Social Security, go to
the middle class, ...
Right. The average social security recipient is wealthier than the
average social security contributer.
The government resorts to such subterfuge as 'employer
contributions' to make it look like the social security tax rate is
'only' 7.35 percent. Actually, the social security tax rate on the
employee's after tax earnings is about 22 percent! The unfunded
liability of the social security system is over ten trillion dollars,
vastly dwarfing the rest of the national debt. Thanks to creative
accounting it doesn't even show up in the national debt at all. But
it is very real. To continue to pay current retirees and to pay back
everyone who has contributed, while stopping the social security tax,
would require ten trillion, that's ten to the thirteenth power,
dollars. That's quite a hole FDR threw us into.
Ten thousand billion. Ten million million. Ten billion thousand.
Equivalent to a billion new cars, ten billion personal computers, a
trillion compact discs, ten trillion large bags of peanuts, a
quadrillion toothpicks, or a mole (6*10**23) of bits of memory.
Of course subsequent generations have made the hole a lot deeper,
but that is pretty inevitable with pyramid schemes like this. There
might be that much wealth in the world, just barely. But since the
social security debt is growing exponentially, that won't be the case
much longer. The system has to collapse sooner or later. Hopefully
sooner, or objective economists would have to judge that the net worth
of the world has gone negative. (Would that mean it would be a net
gain to blow it up?)
... your comment about the amount which taxes would drop if
social spending were eliminated is true even if welfare is
excluded.
We have to cut it all at once. Otherwise, recipients under an
abolished program would simply be switched to another program.
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."
If enough people feel strongly enough that these people deserve
handouts, then the needy WILL get enough. If enough people DON'T feel
that way, then by what right does OUR government take our money and
use it for these programs against our will?
This is typical of the trend to treat people as incompetent to
manage their own affairs. It is apparently believed either that:
1) The majority do not believe in giving sufficient money to the needy
but we (government) are wiser than them and must do what WE choose
with THEIR money against their will.
or
2) The majority DO believe in giving money to the needy, but will not
actually do so without being coerced. "Stop me before I kill
again."
I'm not sure which is a worse insult to the taxpayers. Being
considered a slave, or being considered psychotic.
... 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.
Why aren't the fathers paying child support?
Consider widows in similar circumstances.
Well, this was the original rationale for welfare. But it has grown
by orders of magnitude. Very few of the recipients are widows and
orphans.
Those widows (and widowers) whose spouses left little money and had
no life insurance and which have no skills of their own can be
supported by voluntary donations. There really aren't that many of
them. Most jobs offer life insurance as a fringe benefit, whether you
need it or not. And most wives have skills of their own, and have
been working outside the home for quite some time.
We, as a society, have made the value judgement that such people
should not have to sell their homes and cars ... and live in
abject poverty ...
Whoa! Who is this 'society'? *I* never made any such value
judgement.
There is an enormous gap between having to sell a house and a car
and being in poverty. I own neither house nor car, nor expect to in
the forseeable future. Nor have I ever owned either. But I don't
consider myself even close to being poor. I vehemently object to
being taxed to support people with wealthier lifestyles than me.
Government is out of touch with reality, as usual. Reagan often
talks of the middle class in such a way that it is clear he means a
$40,000 to $100,000 salary range. His recent remark about women not
being willing to give up their diamonds (re South Africa sanctions)
further illustrates this. Even the opponents of the current
administration seem to think that people fall into just two classes -
those who sleep on heating grates and those who have $40,000 or more
to burn.
... we have decided that tax revenues (which are largely voluntary
--it is laughably easy to cheat the IRS) ...
Amazing concept. I think that if we are to have taxes at all, they
should be fair. Everyone should pay the same proportion of their
salary. The fact that taxes and the national debt are higher than
they should be becuase some people cheat on their taxes, well, it just
isn't right. That's not what's meant by voluntary taxes. You could
probably commit murder and not get caught if you were clever about it.
That doesn't mean that the murder statutes are optional.
I've long wondered, what is the justification for the social
security tax being a REGRESSIVE tax, i.e. people with sufficiently
high incomes pay a smaller percentage than the rest of us.
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.
Perhaps I have time for this BECAUSE I don't watch TV? People have
a lot more time than they think. It's all a matter of priorities. An
average person can get several college degrees in the time he would
normally spend watching TV. Well, I'm not doing that, but I think
reading and sending these messages is somewhat more useful than
watching television all day. This is the more interesting tube.
...Keith
[ Having spent several years in front of both (and books), I find that
there is value in TV, you just have to go looking for it -- there's
drek on the computer networks too: just read a few days worth of
net.singles. As to the assertion that "most of these fathers split to
make their wives eligible", I'd like to see some numbers on that.
While initially negative about your 'voluntary contribution'
assertion, I wonder: every year newspapers have stories about needy
families, and these people are virtually buried in contributed food
and clothing. Maybe so, maybe so... 'Arming the peasants' is an
attractive idea, but the social effects could be staggering. The old
slogan "an armed society is a friendly one" may hold, but some
inner-city neighborhoods may become literally free-fire zones. We may
bring Beirut to us... Lastly, concerning the assertion made a while
back (v6 #25) that selling drugs should be legalized: what penalty (if
any) for selling drugs to minors? -CWM]
-------Hank.Walker@UNH.CS.CMU.EDU (08/05/86)
1. You are confusing Reagan and Regan with regard to the women and jewelry (not diamonds) comment. 2. The statement that fathers split to make the mother eligible for means-tested benefits is highly dubious. Most of those on welfare are unwed teenage mothers, or divorcees. Many states have welfare laws designed to keep the husband around in a married couple, and the federal government has taken action recently (seen somewhere in the New York Times) to force other states to change their laws so that they do not cause family breakup. The fathers in the unwed mother case don't split since they were never around. They don't have any money anyway. Remember the high black teenage unemployment rate? The divorcees can get off welfare when their ex-husbands start providing child support. 3. Massachusetts has had a workfare program for a number of years, as has Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania program isn't so good since it doesn't really provide training, and has too much of a make-work element. The Massachusetts program has been relatively successful at getting people off welfare with a combination of welfare, training, and work. 4. Most pension plans have unfunded future liabilities. Since there are about 105 million working and at least 26 million retired Americans, it is hardly surprising that there is a $10T liability, or about $95,000 per working person. That comes to $9500 a year if you are retired for 10 years. There's no problem if you make sure that there is sufficient surplus built up to handle potential future deficits. For example, a surplus is building now to handle the deficit that will come when Baby Boomers retire. This surplus is being generated by those Baby Boomers. By changing the law, you ensure that you can always cover the liability. The law has already been changed so that the retirement age will rise to 67, and taxes will increase. Future liability is increasing, but so are the taxes to pay for it. Current retirees got a good deal. Future retirees won't get a good deal because their money could have been earning higher interest in savings accounts. The Social Security system is no longer a pyramid scheme, since a long-term plan to reconcile taxes and payments is in place. Future economic developments may require adjustments (as has been necessary in the past), but I don't see how you can predict collapse. A separate issue for the long-term future is one raised by Nils Nilsson in the Summer 1984 issue of AI Magazine. If productivity keeps on increasing even at relatively low rates, we may find it difficult to consume all the goods and services produced. Longer schooling and earlier retirement help some, but only for so long. If this situation comes true, then we may be lowering, rather than increasing, the retirement age 100 years from now. -------
SAPPHO@SRI-NIC.ARPA (08/14/86)
No, I don't know of any government that follows the five criteria I listed. Well, ideally I would not completely compel people to pay taxes for social programs, even though I think that there is some level of support for the needy which should be provided. Rather, I would say that the government should tax people, but allow people to conscientiously object to paying the taxes. I myself am compelled to pay taxes to support a military establishment which I am conscientiously opposed to, but which others consider to be a public good. I could refuse these taxes only by lying to prevent their being withheld from my paycheck (which also goes against my conscience) as well as risking being imprisoned. I would like the opportunity to object to paying these taxes on grounds of conscience, so I can take the money and give it to groups which promote nonviolent resolution of conflicts, or which help to build a juster world. If the government will grant me that right, I am happy to grant other people the right to refuse other taxes on grounds of conscience (with no restriction on what beliefs they have to hold to qualify to refuse). People would be required to pay the tax or explicitly say that they objected to paying them. Having the government send statistics on where the money goes with tax forms would also be good. But as long as the government takes large amounts of money from me against my will to spend on things I don't believe in, I will be sure to argue for some of it to be spent on things I do believe in. And I don't object to being called a liberal, since those places where I want my money which has been taken from me spent are generally those which liberals support. Which needy people should the government help? Well, it should not help where its help is not likely to do any good or where voluntary organizations are already doing a better job than the government would. Since I have said that the government isn't to try to make us more moral people, but to prevent the worse kinds of harm, then I guess that would have to be the only reason for which it should take money from us for any service, including welfare. I am not sure how far that would limit welfare. I don't think it is possible or desirable for the government to compel everyone to live according to my moral standards about giving to people who are needy, but I am not willing to be libertarian because of a belief in an absolute right to dispose of my property as I please, since I don't in fact hold that belief. Lynn Gazis sappho@sri-nic ------- -------