I need help with this one. One of my conservative FB friends posted the joke, and some others thought I would disagree. But in some ways I do agree. So I stalled:
"I may need to give this more thought before answering... In some ways I agree and in some ways I think it is too simplistic... But I will give you a link and some questions since you expect it.
Were any of us truly unfortunate? I personally was blessed with educated financially secure parents who valued education and hard work. I think you were also?
Do any of us really think that we would see being on welfare as a reward?"
Now as far as I know most of these folks were blessed to be raised in stable homes and a low crime community with okay schools. Thoughts?
37 comments:
Welfare Facts
Good Citizen
I am still struggling with the concept of productive... Being a Project Engineer at a Product Development and Manufacturing firm, I usual tie productivity to the concept of "value added"
So the reality is that a low wage employee may easily be more "productive" than someone who is just living off their investment income and spends their days golfing?
I mean the food does not get from the truck to the shelves by itself. 🙂
And the reality is that children receive the most welfare, and most of the adults receiving welfare assistance are working.
I guess I'll sleep on it.
We can make a choice to look at things in many ways. We can choose to apply loaded words to those things. But those are our choices, they aren't qualities of things themselve, or at least they don't have to be.
Many people choose to apply the language of reward and punishment to prodcutivity. What does it mean when we apply to taxation? If taxas are a fine for productivity, does productivity have a reward?
I think of this kind of thinking as not so much wrong as it is unproducitive. Rewards and punishment are all about incentive. They are supposed to motivate us in positive and negative ways. They can have a moral elecment attached to them. But is that wny we have taxes? To motivate us to do certain things? How big a factor do taxes play in your decision to go to work on any given morning? I generally believe tax considerations play much less of a role in our thinking than many people claim, particularly during tax times. In policy terms. I and I generally oppose tax measures that are designed to reward or punish behavior. Tax policy should be focused on collection of revenues that are economically efficient.
--Hiram
Productivity is a pretty vague concept. We reward people extravagantly who don't produce much at all, like hedge fund managers. We reward people who dig needed ditches far less. In terms of productivity, it makes no sense to rewward a top major league pitcher far more than a top fifth grade teacher, yet we do and no one seems to have much of a problem with it. We make that choice for reasons that have nothing at all to do with productivity or value to society.
--Hiram
The pitcher pays vastly more in taxes than the teacher. Is that because we are punishing the pitcher? Or rewarding the teacher?
--Hiram
So the reality is that a low wage employee may easily be more "productive" than someone who is just living off their investment income and spends their days golfing?
The concept is way too flexible to have much relevance to a tax policy discussion. It doens't have much to do with how we allocate the tax burden really.
People retire well, because they have saved up. Possibly what they saved were the fruits of their productivity or possible not. In any event, that doesn't have a lot to do with how we impose taxes.
In general, we tax the easily taxed, very broadly understood. We tax those who have money which is easily identified and collected. That's the advantge of tax withholding where the government gets the money before you ever see it, have have a chance to hide it. Money that doesn't come in the form of taxes, that doesn't show up on a W-2, is far more likely to go untaxed, or taxed at a lower rate.
--Hiram
Just a Reminder:
Income Tax: The fine one pays for being productive.
Welfare: The reward one receives for being unproductive.
As for the Baseball Pitcher vs the 5th Grade Teacher.
The Pitcher's very unique capability creates a LOT of VALUE for a LOT of citizens, that is why they are paid so well. Also, he has to perform at a high level regularly or his income will plummet.
Where as if the 5th grade Teacher has an off month, no one is going to notice and their job and income will be safe.
"Income Tax: The fine one pays for being productive."
That's so broad as to be useless. Calling it a "fine" is nonsense. Rich folks also tend to use more infrastructure so they should pay for it. "Productive" is also subjective. The Wall Street dudes who crashed the economy paid taxes, but were their activities productive?
"Welfare: The reward one receives for being unproductive."
As you have noted, pretty much everyone on welfare (who is not elderly, a child, or disabled) is working. And, again, what's really productive? Is it more productive for a parent to work a second or third minimum wage job or is it more productive for them to spend time with their children?
"The Pitcher's very unique capability creates a LOT of VALUE for a LOT of citizens"
A lot of citizens? Not really. For the pitcher, yes. For the owner of the team, yes. For everyone else, not so much.
The Pitcher's very unique capability creates a LOT of VALUE for a LOT of citizens, that is why they are paid so well. Also, he has to perform at a high level regularly or his income will plummet.
Does your paycheck vary with the quality of Twins pitching on a year to year basis? Will the economy be more productive when the kids in fifth grade enter the job market based on the quality of pitching this summer.
No. Baseball is fun, but it is of no practical value whatever. Nevertheless, for many reasons having nothing to do with value, we pay players highly.
--Hiram
Do you think folks are forced to pay to go to games?
Or to endure commercials while they watch the game?
Whether you agree with the fans concept of value, that pitcher is providing them a lot of it.
And his performance is helping to support a LOT of jobs.
Do you think folks are forced to pay to go to games?
No.
Or to endure commercials while they watch the game?
No.
Whether you agree with the fans concept of value, that pitcher is providing them a lot of it.
Can you pay for stuff with the value provided at grocery stores? Can you sell it on ebay? Do you have to report it on your taxes?
And his performance is helping to support a LOT of jobs
Very few people are employed by baseball teams. And those who are, don't get paid a lot. In terms of people employed, it's a pretty small business.
--Hiram
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I think you are in correct given the stadiums, the travel, the accommodations, the advertising, the announcers, the spring training, the marketing, players, coaches, tickets sales, trainers, etc, etc...
All that freely given money goes to a LOT of people.
"All that freely given money goes to a LOT of people."
Economists have studied this. If sports teams vanished, almost all of that value would just appear elsewhere in the economy as opposed to disappearing.
Imagine thinking that the value of a person lies in anything other than the fact that they are a person.
I can't.
Moose
Moose,
Please feel free to give all your money to as many of your fellow humans as you wish. :-)
Us normal humans work hard to create value and earn money to ensure our loved ones are secure and cared for.
While being willing to give some to those humans that offer little in the way of education, skills and/or effort.
With that in mind... How much are you willing to pay of your own income to the homeless / jobless who add little value to our society?
Sean,
I don't watch professional sports, but hobbies of all sorts are very important in a service economy.
It would interesting to know where those economists thought all that money would go if people were not spending it on parking, tickets, beer, dinner, etc, etc, etc...
And what in the world would older Americans do with their free time?
All that freely given money goes to a LOT of people.
Think of the beer guys. Some of them make well into three figures on any given night. We spent a billion dollars on a football stadium that is basically used eight times a year, except during pandemics.
--Hiram
The state must have thought a stadium generated value then... :-)
"It would interesting to know where those economists thought all that money would go if people were not spending it on parking, tickets, beer, dinner, etc, etc, etc..."
It goes to other recreation/leisure, primarily. One notable study said the typical marginal impact of a MLB team was roughly equivalent to one mall department store. You have to put that (and whatever intangible value you assign to "being a big league city") up against the hundreds of millions of dollars in public funding used to construct those stadiums.
PMFBI, but this entire quandary goes away if you simply make the income tax VOLUNTARY, in return for services provided by the government.
"Us normal humans work hard to create value and earn money to ensure our loved ones are secure and cared for."
Good for you. You are no more valuable than anyone else.
Moose
"How much are you willing to pay of your own income to the homeless / jobless who add little value to our society?"
I reject the subtext of your question. People have value because they are people.
Moose
Moose,
Thankfully my employer disagrees with you. :-)
So if we all decided live on the street and beg for a living...
What would be the GDP of the country???
Who would fund those welfare payments?
I completely reject your argument.
You're saying that people who don't PRODUCE value don't HAVE value, or at the very least, have less value.
Moose
You can reject reality if you like.
Theoretically every life a may be equally valuable.
But in reality...
Value:
1: the monetary worth of something : MARKET PRICE
2: a fair return or equivalent in goods, services, or money for something exchanged
3: relative worth, utility, or importance
4: something (such as a principle or quality) intrinsically valuable or desirable
Let's compare 2 extremes...
1. Homeless addict with history of legal issues.
2. Researcher who creates new technologies that help everyone in the country to live better lives.
Comments...
1. They are a cost to society. Money, time, effort is being taken from someone else to cover the costs they incur.
2. They are a positive to society.
So you think they equal value within a society?
By the way, please do not forget that we live in a very competitive world.
A societies total cumulative value will likely determine if the society succeeds or loses ground. If a society loses too much ground, then they lose the resources to help "dead weight" members.
Value is a troubled concept to be used in any kind of debate. It is both subjective, famously in the eye of the beholder, and in defitional terms, too vague with definitions that are self contradictory. Is it, for example, about prices or utility?
--Hiram
I am not sure price or utility helps #1s value score...
Though I agree that America needs ditch diggers every bit as much as engineers...
And we sure do not need as many lawyers and politicians. :-)
Here are some definitions that will help:
--Wealth is the ability to do things for people (feed, clothe, house, entertain)
--The only real wealth is created by people working.
--Capital is accumulated wealth/work. Knowledge is capital.
--Capital multiplies the wealth produced per unit of work. Imagine trying to create new software if you first had to invent the semiconductor, integrated circuit, and computer.
--To pay people to not work consumes wealth. But voluntary transfers of wealth (charity) adds intangible value to giver and receiver alike.
--Those whose "work" is done by their wealth/capital are paid accordingly.
You can define stuff that way, but then you have to define other stuff to conform.
--Wealth is the ability to do things for people (feed, clothe, house, entertain)
Lots of people do that without being wealth. Maybe that have that peculiar kind of wealth we call "Real wealth".
--The only real wealth is created by people working.
But what about unreal wealth?
--Capital is accumulated wealth/work. Knowledge is capital.
If everything is capital than capital is everything.
--Capital multiplies the wealth produced per unit of work. Imagine trying to create new software if you first had to invent the semiconductor, integrated circuit, and computer.
A Van Gogh is worth millions, but they didn't require much work. Vincent dashed off his paintings in a few hours.
--To pay people to not work consumes wealth. But voluntary transfers of wealth (charity) adds intangible value to giver and receiver alike.
Lots of people don't work yet their wealth increases. That has happened a lot during the pandemic.
--Those whose "work" is done by their wealth/capital are paid accordingly.
People who don't work can certainly get a lot wealthier a lot faster than those who do.
--Hiram
"1. They are a cost to society. Money, time, effort is being taken from someone else to cover the costs they incur."
Round them up and exterminate them.
Moose
Moose,
That may be a bit extreme...
Acknowledging the problem is a start...
And pressing / helping them to improve would be next.
If after all that they still refuse to stay clean and or stay on their meds...
Maybe them we exterminate them. :-) Or maybe just stop giving them money.
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