>probably not intentional

All the current results were foretold by people screeching warnings about them 50+yr ago.

> deeper and more systemic.

Nobody's budget ever got bigger or headcount grew or government contract got more lucrative because people got off welfare.

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Arainach 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

What "current results" are you referring to? No, people 50+ years ago weren't arguing that cliffs can lead to disincentives, they were arguing that the whole system is "socialism" and bad - something that has been repeatedly disproven.

There are few things more evil in our society than the breed of conservative that will talk about how their family needed social welfare growing up to survive, how it worked and they did survive, but how "ashamed" they feel so they thing we should tear everything down and remove the ladder now that they've climbed it.

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littlestymaar 3 days ago | parent [-]

> What "current results" are you referring to? No, people 50+ years ago weren't arguing that cliffs can lead to disincentives, they were arguing that the whole system is "socialism" and bad - something that has been repeatedly disproven.

In fact, we have disincentives like that because they were arguing that having a flat benefit for everyone would be socialism.

If you don't reduce benefit with income level, these disincentives vanishes and that's how all post-war systems worked in Europe (can't talk about the US) before the neoliberal crew started dismantling everything in the name of “reducing public spendings” for greater economic efficiency.

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rob74 3 days ago | parent [-]

A flat benefit for everyone that doesn't reduce with income level would be universal basic income, which has many supporters in theory, but has never been implemented in practice so far, not even in the most socialist countries of the 20th century...

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littlestymaar 3 days ago | parent [-]

No it's not. Not all benefit is “income” and not all such income is universal. And it also has nothing to do with socialism (socialism is about forbidding the private property of the means of production! Please stop calling every kind of public intervention “socialism”, that's as ridiculous as calling all Republicans “fascists”).

For the non-income version see countries with free schools or free hospital, and for an example of an income benefit see the French Allocation familiales, which until 2015 were given to every family with 2 child or more no matter the parents income.

There were plenty of such systems, and some of them still exist (AFAIK the US social security is one of those, you don't lose access to the benefits even if you're rich)

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rob74 3 days ago | parent [-]

Ok, those are valid examples (also, how about free roads for everyone? Everyone seems to take that for granted and wouldn't dream about calling it "socialist"), but in your original post you wrote about "a flat benefit for everyone" that doesn't reduce with income level, and the examples you gave are either non-income or not for everyone (e.g. not for families with less than two children, not for people who didn't pay social security taxes for at least 10 years etc.).

	▲	littlestymaar 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		> Ok, those are valid examples (also, how about free roads for everyone? Everyone seems to take that for granted and wouldn't dream about calling it "socialist") This exactly. > but in your original post you wrote about "a flat benefit for everyone" that doesn't reduce with income level Yeah, my writing was confusing. By “for everyone” I meant “no matter the income”, not that we should give children's allowance to single adults. Just that we stop index these things on income. By the way I also think we should give more in nature (“the medical operation is free”), and less in cash, but that's independent.

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Brigand 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Every employee is off welfare. Employment is very lucrative.

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ehnto 3 days ago | parent [-]

That's not true for the US, because minimum wage is so low you can be working full time and still be below the poverty line. The poverty line is not minimum wage, it's the amount it takes to afford to live.

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tt24 3 days ago | parent [-]

Nobody in the United States makes minimum wage.

	▲	adgjlsfhk1 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		that's true. lots of people make tipped minimum wage which is way lower

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energy123 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

We all know that person on the left that struggles with reasoning that involves economic or statistical intuition, but has extremely strong instincts of right and wrong, and is quick to outrage and moral certainty, and low in curiosity.

Their thinking is that poor people are poor, which is bad. So let's check if they're poor, and give them money so they're not poor anymore, which is good. That feels right. Let's do that.

Negative income tax? But that gives rich people money too! Giving rich people money is bad because they're rich already. QED.