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[Glyndŵr]

Our welfare system in the UK is pretty decent. I wouldn't consider us to be in a welfare trap.

I've heard the UK has quite a few welfare traps in its system. I'm not sure what you mean by "us" (i assume people in the UK) not being in a welfare trap, since I don't get the feeling your on welfare. Obviously it doesn't trap the people not trapped by it. Have you been on the welfare system? Looked into how it worked? Because I've heard the UK is actually particularly bad about it. I don't know for sure, but I've never heard anything about it being particularly good at avoiding the welfare trap.

Also, that reminds me,

If someone is a competent parent and loves their children very much, it is nobody's business to take their children away from them.

No one was talking about taking the children of competent and loving parents away, only the children of neglectful and abusive ones.

But I saw a fellow saying that drug addicts, alcoholics and prostitutes should have their children taken away from them.

from my admittedly limited knowledge of the subject, higher education in the uk is also significantly more expensive than the rest of europe, which further encourages the low class mobility observed

We have no tuition fees in Scotland. I think the same is true in Wales and Northern Ireland, none of which had any riots if I recall correctly.

[kaijyuu]

The United States are close second, which really make me wonder: wasn't there a thing called the "American Dream"?

They made a nice play about that.

[MaximumZero]

About food stamps/welfare: I have never qualified for it. I didn't qualify when I was homeless (no address, since the shelters in the area were all based in religious institutions and refused to help me out because I wouldn't join their congregation,) I don't qualify now (whenever I try to get a reason why, I get nothing but runaround,) and my family didn't qualify when I was a kid (my father made about $40/year too much. Parents don't qualify for welfare, but do for food stamps right now, to the tune of about $150/mo for 5 adults and 1 toddler. 4 of the adults in the house are unemployed.)

I just don't get it.

[Leafsnail]

Our welfare system in the UK is pretty decent. I wouldn't consider us to be in a welfare trap.

It depends how you look at it.  It's a reasonable rate so you aren't stuck constantly grovelling around for food (which is the "work house" type of welfare trap - your welfare is on such poor terms you don't have time to find a job), but on the other hand you lose your housing benefits as soon as you get a job, which can in some cases leave you worse off.  So if your only prospects are in low paid jobs you are to some extent "trapped" (this could be more of a "jobs don't pay enough" problem though).

Considering the UK is the western country with the lowest class mobility, I'm inclined to think their welfare system isn't that good.

Can you... explain to me how that graph works?  Like, what elasticity means in this context?

Weren't the riots some time ago pretty much completely about the welfare trap?

Not really.  I guess it probably contributed in a vague way but it certainly wasn't a direct cause.

from my admittedly limited knowledge of the subject, higher education in the uk is also significantly more expensive than the rest of europe, which further encourages the low class mobility observed

That's only coming in next year, so it could hardly have contributed to the current lack of social mobility (the loan terms are pretty flexible and progressive too - it's basically a graduate tax).  I mean there were tuition fees before but they weren't hugely high compared to other places.

[GlyphGryph]

Also, being in a welfare trap has nothing to do with hoe comfortable a trap it may be. If I gave you an infinite credit card that let you purchased whatever you wanted, but cut you off completely the moment you earned your first dollar, that would still be a welfare trap.

The only qualifier is that you are significantly worse off by either earning a living or trying to earn a living than if your only source of income was welfare - that getting "better" requires things to get worse.

[Lagslayer]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_elasticity_of_demand

That graph is still too vague, I think. Needs more context.

[darkrider2]

Why not cut off welfare payments only when the income they are earning without the welfare becomes twice or thrice that of the welfare payments themselves.

[Leafsnail]

Also, being in a welfare trap has nothing to do with hoe comfortable a trap it may be.

It does have something to do with it if the conditions are sufficiently horrible (see workhouses).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_elasticity_of_demand

That graph is still too vague, I think. Needs more context.

That's completely irrelevant to social mobility though.

[penguinofhonor]

Considering the UK is the western country with the lowest class mobility, I'm inclined to think their welfare system isn't that good.

Can you... explain to me how that graph works?  Like, what elasticity means in this context.

I... uh. This is a lot more complex than I thought.

I looked up a paper on the study this graph is from (since I don't think I can get the study itself), and it's told me that the 0.5 for the US means that 50% of a family's "earnings advantage" is passed on to their children, but I don't know exactly what that means. It also seems to state that half of children end up in the same social class as their parents, but this could be unrelated? There's also a bunch of math I don't get.

Someone smarter than me read this. I'll stop quoting statistics I can't understand.

[Leafsnail]

In the United States almost one half of children born to low income parents become low income adults. This is an extreme case, but the fraction is also high in the United Kingdom at four in ten, and Canada where about one-third of low income children do not escape low income in adulthood.

What I'm trying to work out is how the US has a higher "people stay poor" fraction yet a lower... "elasticity".  The analytical method used seems like it might be vulnerable to outliers (ie the occasional person becoming extremely rich doesn't necessarily mean that the society as a whole is highly social mobile).

Note: each vertical bar represents the value of a reported earnings elasticity. For Denmark only one estimate is available, for the United States there are 28, the lowest is less than 0.1 and the highest slightly greater than 0.6

It seems to be an extremely difficult metric to calculate too (the UK has better social mobility than Sweden for some of the measured values, and the US has values suggesting it's both the most socially mobile and least socially mobile (and everything in between).  I'd be tempted to just stick with "poor people stay poor" since it's easy to understand and addresses the key issue of whether poverty can be escaped.

[penguinofhonor]

I took that to mean that the UK had less mobility in its middle/upper classes, while the US had most of its elasticity focused in the lower class.

[Leafsnail]

The other issue I have with it is that if you look at figure one the values are scattered all over the place.  If something has that level of variance (enough to make the US the best or worst depending on who you ask, say) then I really have to question its value as an indicator.

But the key point is that UK social mobility is pretty bad anyway, and that probably isn't help by welfare being set up like it is.

[Nadaka]

Why not cut off welfare payments only when the income they are earning without the welfare becomes twice or thrice that of the welfare payments themselves.

One reason (from the perspective of welfare for everyone): Then you have to pay for the bureaucratic system for determining, managing and tracking when people get their welfare cut off.

Another reason (from the traditional perspective): Because someone who is capable of earning does not need as much assistance as someone who isn't earning (this is partly true, assuming the hourly rate is higher than the hourly cost of childcare). And because welfare needs to be conserved for those who need it most, those who earn need to be given progressively less support based on an arcane and difficult  to process formula, thus justifying the welfare bureaucracy.

Another reason (from the conservative perspective): Anyone who isn't a cripple can earn a good wage if only they work hard enough. Someone who works but isn't earning enough to live on has been judged by the divine hand of the almighty market and does not deserve any assistance.

Note: I am not ENTIRELY serious with some of these answers.

[GlyphGryph]

Also, being in a welfare trap has nothing to do with how comfortable a trap it may be.

It does have something to do with it if the conditions are sufficiently horrible (see workhouses).

I don't think that's really so much a property of the trap's comfort though. It's not worth arguing semantics though - I only intended the statement to refer to upper bounds - lack of comfort may be able to cause a welfare trap, but abundance of comfort never counteracts one.

[EnigmaticHat]

The United States are close second, which really make me wonder: wasn't there a thing called the "American Dream"?

I think our education system may have something to do with that.  If you're born in certain areas, you're much less likely to graduate high school, which (probably) means no high paying job for you (my twelfth grade English teacher described inner city "dropout factories" where the vast majority of students don't graduate).  People's ability to go to a good college is also very dependent on income, and quality of public schools is pretty closely tied to how expensive it is to live in a certain area.  Basically, if your parents are poor, you end up at a big disadvantage in the job market because of your poor education, which means you're more likely to be poor.  Rinse and repeat for the next generation.