1. Universal social programs that “help everyone” are folly. Regardless of your political philosophy, taxing everyone to help everyone makes no sense.
2. In the U.S. (along with virtually every other country), most government social spending is devoted to these indefensible universal programs – Social Security, Medicare, and K-12 public education for starters.
3. Social programs – universal or means-tested – give people perverse incentives, discouraging work, planning, and self-insurance. The programs give recipients very bad incentives; the taxes required to fund the programs give everyone moderately bad incentives. The more “generous” the programs, the worse the collateral damage. As a result, even programs carefully targeted to help the truly poor often fail a cost-benefit test. And while libertarians need not favor every government act that passes the cost-benefit test, they should at least oppose every government act that fails it.
Read the whole thing. However, these first few paragraphs made me worry about a nirvana fallacy. Nirvana would be a program that gives money or services to poor people without creating incentives that tend to discourage work. I do not believe that nirvana exists, so that in the real world we have to compromise. You either let poor people suffer or you provide a program that dilutes their incentive to work. Some further remarks:
1. Programs to help the poor do not necessarily have to be provided by the national government. They could come from local governments, or from private charity. I personally would like to see a mix. I can make a case for a universal basic income provided by the national government, with a marginal tax rate of 25 percent or less. For example, with a 25 percent tax rate, if a household of 4 with zero income gets $12,000. then when its income reaches $20,000 it gets $7000 and when its income reaches $48,000 it gets zero. Beyond the basic income, local governments and private charities could provide supplemental income and services to households with special needs, such as a child with expensive medical problems. If we are worried that households will not budget to meet their basic needs, we can give them money not in dollars but instead in the form of a flexible benefit that can only be spent on food, housing, medical care, and education.
2. I also can make a case for having generous welfare states, but with no involvement at the national level. Denmark and Sweden have less than 10 million people each. Why do we need to spread a welfare state over 300 million people?
3. I think that the case for abolishing or phasing out existing social welfare programs is very strong.
4. Those who favor a role for the national government in providing a welfare state should worry about a political nirvana fallacy. Take your ideal welfare state. Maybe it looks like (1) above). Maybe it looks like some idealized version of Scandinavia. In practice, how do you get from here to there?
Overall, I think that there is a powerful pragmatic utilitarian case for reducing the role of the national government in the U.S. in providing support for education, health care, housing, and income security. Not because we do not wish to be generous in helping people with those benefits. But because the set of national programs is so wasteful and inefficient.
For a more philosophical counter to Bryan, see Matt Zwolinksi. I do not like to discuss these issues solely at an abstract philosophical level. I am more focused on taking reality as it is and posing the question of what is the direction for improvement.
Contra Caplan’s (1): You could imagine the gov’t taxing everybody to provide a type of insurance against having children with special needs, i.e. free care (or group homes) for severely autistic children. BC wants more fertility; this should help!
Yeah, it’s the definition of what the government should be doing. The problem is they won’t do it. We can’t even make them do it. I think I know why they won’t do it.
Example: Why can’t we just have a sensible national defense? Because only by instigating do they create more demand for belligerent offensive capabilities (and domestic spying, etc.). Every problem creates demand. They promise the solution. Then, rather than giving us the solution, which would reduce demand, they take the bundled good of Representative Democracy to do anything else that feathers their nest.
I don’t ‘hate’ people like the Niskanen center for another reason. The same reason I hate banning incandescent light bulbs. The obvious solution is LED bults. They just aren’t ready. The solution is obviously not flourescent bulbs which appear read but will never be ready.
I think the Niskanen center hasn’t yet found their LED bulb. Until they do, their bright ideas look like flurescent bults. I’m patient. I’ve waited this long.
I think that increasingly, especially if the Trump becomes a thing but likely trending that way without him, libertarian wonks are going to become a subset of the Democratic coalition since that is already the coalition of highly educated people sensitive to the harm principle of morality.
Their role in the democratic coalition will be to provide the propaganda for:
1) UBI, which various libertarian heroes have already proposed in the past
2) “Nudge” policies based on statistical studies. These will be sold as the “less intrusive” alternative to some new bureaucracy (“a tax on Soda’s is preferable to a new Soda Safety Department”).
3) Loosening of regulations on a the democratic client base the way they’ve done so for the republican client base.
4) Anything anti-cop.
On #1 I doubt they will succeed in dismantling current welfare/service bureaucrats, but they may manage to add a layer of direct UBI on top of that.
It is always humorous when you take like 3 guys and extrapolate that to all libertarians.
But, you know, not Ron Paul, the most prominent of all libertarians of late who was against basically all your bogeymen.
Will Wilkinson is all libertarians. Richard Thaler is all libertians.Bryan Caplan is all libertarians.
I’m not even sure who you have in mind as being being anti-cop, but if I have to be either pro shooting a guy in the back and then planting the tazer on him or against it and against it makes me anti-cop, then I can be your huckleberry. If you need someone to be against domestic spying that has not stopped ONE SINGLE terrorist attack and yet is supported by the President to the point of perjury before Congress, then yeah, I’m your huckleberry.
And point of info, by the way, if I say we need a national defense, and then liberals or Republicans then say “well, national defense is attacking Iraq or Libya or Syria.” That’s not on me.
Just like if libertarians (who I don’t agree with, and most libertarians don’t) say we should eliminate bad welfare and replace with good welfare as a second best, and the Republicans and Democrats don’t do it, that is also not on us.
There is some ambiguity over what is social welfare and what is not; justice and defense are not entirely not welfare, and welfare bears heavily on the latter. Is it worse to provide welfare than pay more for incarceration? What defense could we mount with the uneducated? Democracy has always been considered dependent on education. Means testing also has perverse incentives since it is entirely equivalent to higher marginal taxation. Incentives among the poor are actually immense since even small amounts can contribute vastly to well being when poor. Draconian means to increase them further are counterproductive deterring them from even trying. There are some goods that don’t suffer as much from these problems, inferior goods.
It is as important to consider levels as margins. Who believes cutting benefits is motivating even if it lowers margins? Who believes increasing taxes is motivating even if it lowers margins?
Social Insurance has a lot of support. Most people are expected to try to pay in what they take out, and everyone would like to be taken care of in the event of illness, etc. Private insurance can meet some but not all of these needs, so people turn to government to supply insurance goods the market can’t.
Welfare is different from Social Insurance. Rather then everyone trying to pay in what they take out, welfare recipients are seen as being permanent lifetime net recipients. That elicits are very different reaction in people. Social Insurance is something you or I might collect one day. Welfare is something most people will never see.
Hence, why people say things like “keep your government hands off my Medicare.” It seems ironic, but what people are really talking about is that they view Medicare as Social Insurance they have paid for over a lifetime of taxes, much like any other annuity you paid premiums on your whole life and expect to collect on in old age.
We can complain the actuarial math doesn’t quite work out that way, but generations of propaganda stating the opposite have been pretty successful in shaping the public mind (and not just paid propagandists, technocratic professionals have added to this public perception as well). If the man on the street could do actuarial calculations I wouldn’t have the career I have. Can’t really blame them for not understanding.
One of the problems though is that Social Insurance assumes a similar level of human capital. That way most people are paying in what they take out, because they produce about as much, and the payouts are mostly based on random chance (getting sick though not fault of your own, etc). If there is a wildly varying level of human capital then some people will never be able to produce enough to pay their fair share into the social insurance pool. This by default means they either “are left to die in the streets” or receive out and out Welfare.
The fundamental issue is that human capital has a large fixed component based on genetics. Education and other factors can’t change this. As a result a segment of the population can’t participate in social insurance schemes and can only be supported by welfare.
This is resented by the people paying for the welfare, and puts strain on the social insurance programs by making them less affordable (they always had a degree of welfare embedded, but it was critical to their popularity that the insurance aspect overwhelm the welfare aspect).
Wilkinson and Co.’s praise for the European social democratic model baffles me. Oh yes, you have this fantastic degree of entrepreneurial freedom…but if a large fraction of the fruits of these policies go to the state via a heavy tax burden, how is that a win? Not saying I’m in love with the present state of US policy, but it really is not obvious to me that the Denmark system is superior.
I think it’s stupid. But you can’t call people stupid at a dinner party. But you really need to call the democrats who will cut your throat in election season stupid as often as possible.
Libertarians need to be Dorothy in streets and Blanche in the streets.
Is that a Golden Girls analogy? Man, no wonder libertarians don’t get invited to any of those fashionable Georgetown cocktail parties; we’re way too uncool for that.
It’s a meme. I had no idea one of the benefits was not getting invited to cocktail parties!
The other point is that Dorothy and Blanche don’t have to snipe eachother. Unless they are stupid as hell.
In Arnold’s meditations (and in most considerations) there seems to be a tendency to avoid the differentiations, individual and group, of the factors that generate these issues.
The tendencies are to “deal” with “THE” poor; “THE” homeless, etc. rather than identify the various categories or components that are so aggregated.
The considerations of motivations (“incentives-disincentives” e.g.) seem to ignore their individual or category natures, as well as the *initial* sources of those motivations.
That is one of the reasons that localizing the human aspects of such problems are essential to humane ameliorations or “solutions;” case by case. Go back and read Bastait’s “Justice and Fraternity.”
Power and control wants to concentrate itself, not create rivals.
Reading through Bryan’s defenses, I think he threw out a few softballs that could easily be refuted.
The big one, I think, is where the line is drawn with personal responsibility. I think Bryan sees an alcoholic as someone who’s skipping to the front of the line to get his dessert, but a liberal would see it as someone that likely suffers from deep anguish inside and would like to be something else if they could, and thus worthy of help. You refer to this as the Intent Principle, I believe.
Secondly, a lot depends on how you prioritize your values. If you think making sure “Everyone Is Taken Care Of” is the highest moral value, then you’re likely going to support a bloated welfare state even if you agree that it’s poorly constructed, which renders a lot of other points moot.
I don’t think he’d pass the ideological Turing Test on that one.
The concerns about these kinds of “programs” generally center on their effects on those for whose benefits or ameliorations they are intended.
But what of the **obligations** that must be imposed for the viability of such “programs?”
Should we conscript teachers, nurses and doctors to serve? Confiscate properties for housing needs?
On what basis shall we allocate the assignments of obligations and in what degrees?
It is quite one thing when obligations are voluntarily assumed (even sought); another when they are imposed. Read, Bastiat, “Justice and Fraternity.”
But shouldn’t states and local governments worry about attracting poor people from outside there areas? I think that is a factor in slow growth and building regulation they look in part like attempts to drive away the poor. That is definitely the case in gated communities.
aren’t people with very low incomes largely above or below working age, or disabled?
I see medicine as a civilization vs barbarism issue, wherein doctors and nurses are barbarians raiding our civilization. I don’t c how politics can b removed from medicine, and so I want an arch-bureaucrat Cincinnatus to distort them back in their place