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[Descan]

Right now I feel dizzy and separated from my body. I am having trouble focusing on anything and my arms hurt for no real reason.

I have no idea why.

you're lucky I even remembered the word magenta.

[Mephansteras]

Back on the elections, five thirty eight has an interesting article on the effect of Romney's 47% comment.

Basically, it comes down to a 'Huh, yeah, maybe that really did have an effect.', which apparently most Gaffs don't do for very long.

[mainiac]

Plagiarizing the Onion isn't just for republicans anymore.

[Zrk2]

Did we move on from the negative income tax yet? Wouldn't that end in runaway inflation?

[mainiac]

Did we move on from the negative income tax yet? Wouldn't that end in runaway inflation?

No, inflation does not work that way.

[Zrk2]

You probably know better than me as my knowledge of economics boils down to this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[RedKing]

Plagiarizing the Onion isn't just for republicans anymore.

I'm more mindblown by the whole "Iranian female ninjitsu school" thing. WTF?

Spoiler: Macroeconomics. In ragecomic form. (click to show/hide)

[MetalSlimeHunt]

You probably know better than me as my knowledge of economics boils down to this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Which is disturbingly similar to economists knowledge of economics.

[kaijyuu]

Economics teachers don't change the questions on their tests every year, they change the answers.

[Nadaka]

Did we move on from the negative income tax yet? Wouldn't that end in runaway inflation?

I don't find the argument that it would create inflation to be persuasive.

Price competition for goods will still exist, both within the market for a type of good and between them. It could just as easily lead to deflation because it would soften the minimum bound placed on demand due to abject poverty.

Hyperinflation is the result of an inflation of monetary supply. You have to print money in increasingly large volumes to create hyperinflation. So as long as the welfare system was funded primarily through taxes instead of printing money, its effect on inflation would be slight.

[Leafsnail]

US progressive politicians are frigid towards the idea of reforming welfare because they got burned on welfare reforms in the mid 90s.  Welfare reform was supposed to be a bi-partisan way to get rid of freeloaders without hurting the needy.  But the problem is that freeloaders are few and far between, so it mostly just amounted to a system to make the poor jump through more humiliating hoops.  The conservatives have if anything grown less inclined to help the poor since then.  So another welfare reform is impossible, conservatives just want to slash, progressives feel once bitten twice shy.

An almost universal law of welfare is that any attempt to prevent "freeloaders" or "the undeserving poor" from getting money ends up costing more than it saves.  This is why I think universal benefits would be a better alternative than negative income taxes.

Back on the elections, five thirty eight has an interesting article on the effect of Romney's 47% comment.

Basically, it comes down to a 'Huh, yeah, maybe that really did have an effect.', which apparently most Gaffs don't do for very long.

I'm not that surprised.  I'd say it's essentially the economic equivalent of Todd Akin's "gaffe" (I'm not sure if gaffe is the word since in both cases it was them accidentally saying what they really thought).

[GlyphGryph]

Leafsnail, I am pretty sure we were talking about the Basic Income version of the NIT (at least I was, when I first brought it up), which has as one of it's core components that there is no means test.

Although it should be emphasized that the NIT, especially the Basic Income variant we were discussing, is not a welfare system, but rather would eliminate the need for most of the welfare system. (it would not provide training opportunities or medical care, for example) Unless you consider social security welfare, I guess. because it works more like that.

But yeah, I don't see how that could possible cause inflation.

[Gantolandon]

An almost universal law of welfare is that any attempt to prevent "freeloaders" or "the undeserving poor" from getting money ends up costing more than it saves.  This is why I think universal benefits would be a better alternative than negative income taxes.

Even not giving them money costs. They do get sick, for example, much easier - mostly because of malnutrition, stress, and lack of sanitation. Diseases, for some reason, don't want to kill only those "underserving" and have a nasty habit to mutate into new, potentially dangerous forms. A new strain of flu may be a parting gift from one of those people, who could have been treated instead.

It's also a good way to create a criminal class who hate the society that spurned them. Now the country needs even more, better armed police forces, who frequently has to deal with resentful and brutal outlaws. Courts and prisons? They also need more money. The cities? I could talk a lot about how neighboring slums affect land value, but it's probably easy to guess.

Talking about welfare cuts is not about saving money, it's about moving the expenses where they are harder to spot, so the blame could be shifted on commies, ingrates and wrathful gods of economy.

[SalmonGod]

My wife's grandparents (who raised her through most of her childhood in Arkansas) owned a house that they rented out.  At one point, they did rent out to some welfare freeloaders who were pretty much the most horrible people imaginable.  They adopted a large number of mentally disabled children and simply didn't care for them.  Barely fed and clothed the kids, let them run wild, pocketed all the financial benefits, and didn't work.  They eventually got found out and evicted.  My wife had to go clean up the mess with her grandparents.  Feces everywhere, etc.

So it's not a complete myth... but still an extreme rarity.  Plus, if people were guaranteed necessities, those children would have been spared that neglect.

[GlyphGryph]

Oh god, those people. Yes, if you want to find the terrible people, look at foster-care/adoption. You don't get paid nearly as much for regular kids as foster kids, so anyone doing it for the money will probably go that route.

But this has been a thing for a long time. People have been abusing adopted kids since even before the government paid them too. Where the fuck was their social worker, though? It's bullshit.

These people weren't freeloaders, they were criminals.