The Welfare State: Beat it with a stick or put it on the life support system? (2 Viewers)

[banco55]

Has some kind of sutdy ever been done on the relation between tax brackets and motivation to earn money. Even if high tax is a demotivator I would argue that the motivation of money is still extremely high. I reckon you could just about as easily argue that the 50% tax rate motivates them to earn twice as much.

Yeah they've done lots of studies but there's still controversy over just how high the tax rate has to be for it to act as a disincentive but there's not much question that at some point it becomes a disincentive.

 

[yy]

Actually doctors work fairly long hours as it stands. If they worked for considerably longer hours there would be a significant decrease in the quality of service.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2006/10/25/1161749190007.html

that's mostly the interns/junior doctors, they just got out of an expensive and long education and is heavily indebted. their pay is significantly lower than your general practitioners.

 

[_dhj_]

that's mostly the interns/junior doctors, they just got out of an expensive and long education and is heavily indebted. their pay is significantly lower than your general practitioners.

That's rather weak. You could have given another example and conceeded that doctors don't need to work longer hours.

 

[KFunk]

how does being forced to give half of your money away act as an incentive to earn more money? which would motivate you to work longer? $50 an hr or $100 an hr? especially you're already on high income, which means your basic needs have already been met

I wasn't asserting it so much as asking whether anyone knew which one was the case.

Yeah they've done lots of studies but there's still controversy over just how high the tax rate has to be for it to act as a disincentive but there's not much question that at some point it becomes a disincentive.

Fortunately someone was willing to give an answer, danke. While I think there is a definite upper limit to taxation, I also feel that welfare and redistribution of wealth are a necessary aspect of achieving social justice (something I value above 'negative freedoms', in Berlin or Feinberg's sense of the phrase). Noone on the face of the earth should be experiencing pangs of starvation while others can afford to consume gold plated food. Economic progression means little to me if it means we have to leave the wayward members of our society to fall into oblivion. [I apologise - I know some of that language got overly dramatic, but it's hard not to go that way when one considers the gross inequalities that pervade our world on both the national and international scales]

 

[withoutaface]

do you really believe this? could you please make a list of which groups deserve to be supported and which should be left to starve?

Those who should be supported are those who have a physical disability which renders them unable to earn enough to support themselves, and whoever else private charities deem worthy.

to quote Eisenhower in 1954, "Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."

So essentially his argument is "more people agree with me, therefore I'm right"?

Wow. Just, wow.

 

[withoutaface]

This is obviously another one of those naive libertarian solutions for all the world's problems.

Have you actually thought about the implications of totally abandoning welfare? Name one prosperous modern day country without a welfare system. Sorry but such libertarian idealism does not work in the real world.

Name one modern day country with an established economic system that abandoned welfare in the first place. Saying libertarian idealism doesn't work because it hasn't been implemented is like saying the Freedom Tower in NYC won't be big because it hasn't been built yet.

If you've been to Hong Kong you would have realised that it is a city with massive income inequality and a high level of relative poverty. I can also say that the countries with the highest standards of living (Scandinavian countries) have relatively large government sectors. The fact is that circumstances among countries differ, and thus the equilibrium level of welfare differs. What's certain however is that the equilibrium figure is never zero.

"Relative poverty" and "income inequality" are a load of shit. It just completely reflects the whole "if I can't have anything, then noone can" argument whereby you'd rather have equality at $1000/head than inequality with everyone at or over $1500/head.

 

[withoutaface]

I support limited welfare, and strongly agree with Thomas Pogge that poverty is a breach of human rights

So if I choose not to work, and have the ability to, my rights are being breached because I can't put food on the table?

 

[withoutaface]

No poverty as in the worst parts of Africa where you don't have the ability to make money no matter how much you work, ie ABSOLUTE poverty. Not just being poor.

I'd agree with that, though would argue that the rights being contravened are separate from the concept of a positive right to be free of poverty, but rather a widespread abuse of negative liberties creates poverty as a direct consequence.

 

[_dhj_]

Name one modern day country with an established economic system that abandoned welfare in the first place. Saying libertarian idealism doesn't work because it hasn't been implemented is like saying the Freedom Tower in NYC won't be big because it hasn't been built yet.

Despite the existence of the ideology for a long period of time there has been no established economy with the will to implement that ideology. Does that not say something about people's attitude towards that ideology? Paradoxically the ideology argues for people's freedom and self-determination. Can't libertarians grasp the concept that people simply don't want a society without a welfare safety net to protect the unfortunate? I don't see how the Freedom Tower analogy is even remotely relevant.

 

[volition]

Despite the existence of the ideology for a long period of time there has been no established economy with the will to implement that ideology. Does that not say something about people's attitude towards that ideology? Paradoxically the ideology argues for people's freedom and self-determination. Can't libertarians grasp the concept that people simply don't want a society without a welfare safety net to protect the unfortunate? I don't see how the Freedom Tower analogy is even remotely relevant.

I'm not really arguing for or against here, just throwing my 2 cents in, but I think that most people haven't given this issue much thought, and voter apathy can make it hard for people to see/realise benefits that aren't obvious to them. But I feel that this shouldn't change what the 'ideal system' would still be.

In much the same way that a FTA is supposed to be better overall for everyone involved, but at first people won't want to do it because "oh noes our industries will die".

 

[Not-That-Bright]

So if I choose not to work, and have the ability to, my rights are being breached because I can't put food on the table?

Are you saying;

- If someone is too lazy to work they deserve to die, or
- If we provide assistance people have less incentive to work

?

 

[_dhj_]

I'm not really arguing for or against here, just throwing my 2 cents in, but I think that most people haven't given this issue much thought, and voter apathy can make it hard for people to see/realise benefits that aren't obvious to them. But I feel that this shouldn't change what the 'ideal system' would still be.

In much the same way that a FTA is supposed to be better overall for everyone involved, but at first people won't want to do it because "oh noes our industries will die".

If he can't find a decent example in a modern society where an economy decides to abandon welfare, that should be sufficient reason for the policy to be labelled idealistic and it should provide sufficient evidence for the fact that people don't want a system without welfare. In fact even with communism there have been societies with sufficient will from idealistic leaders and people to give it a go (not that they've been particularly successful). In the case of abandoning welfare, there is that added layer with its strong association with libertarianism (indeed its advocates in this thread are self-labeled "libertarians"). Surely if they advocate that people are free to do what they wish, they'd also realise that people, left to do what they wish, would neither run for government on that policy nor vote for a party which advocates it.

 

[withoutaface]

Despite the existence of the ideology for a long period of time there has been no established economy with the will to implement that ideology. Does that not say something about people's attitude towards that ideology? Paradoxically the ideology argues for people's freedom and self-determination. Can't libertarians grasp the concept that people simply don't want a society without a welfare safety net to protect the unfortunate? I don't see how the Freedom Tower analogy is even remotely relevant.

Libertarianism has never been tried because:
a) it's a subtle, rather intellectual ideology, in the same vein as communism, only the other way around;
b) unlike communism, its supporters tend to be reluctant to institute it by force because force goes against the ideology itself.