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I find it ironic that most people see europe as more liberal than the USA yet most people I know who move there are staunch conservatives who move there because the policies they care about and the people themselves are overall **less** liberal than the USA.
It seems very few people even realize that by many measures europe is more conservative rather than liberal. A prime example of this would be the taxation scheme which in much of europe has a lower ratio between the poor and the rich classes (closer to flat tax).
@freemo Which policies you have in mind? I think that both economic and political policies of Europe are much more liberal than in USA (there are some exceptions and mostly in eastern europe, [hello Poland!]).
Why is taxation scheme example of liberality? I would say its not about how much one taxes rich vs poor, but about how that taxed money is then distributed.
@vnarek
Well its important to understand what liberal and conservative mean. I think they tend to be inaccutate terms since liberal generally is used to refer to neoliberals specifically. In other words liberal is generally used as a synonym for democratic socialism. The primary principles of liberalism and socialism is a large degree of government regulation and oversight as well as using taxation to redistribute wealth from the rich. Conservatism generally has at its central point the opposite, minimal government regulation and intervention and relying on free markets.
Taxation is relevant as the usa has a more progressive tax scheme, that ia, a scheme intending to put a higher tax ratio between poor and rich in an attempt to redistribute wealth.
We find the same pattern in other areas. Europe is generally much more noninterventionist when it comes to foreign affairs, which again is along the lines of small governance associated with the right.
@freemo Wikipedia defines liberal as someone who is for free economy without goverment interventions + individual rights/equality.
From what you said earlier I deduced that you are using liberalism as synonym for social democracy and used your definition in my last answer.
It is not about tax collection, but distribution. Taxes that are collected in europe are distributed via strong welfare systems for health care, education, and social funding. USA does not really have this kind of safety nets.
@vnarek Yes the wikipedia uses the classical definition of liberal. This is not what most people in the USA today mean when they say liberal, they usually mean neo-liberal, which is effectively the opposit of that.
Free economy (free markets) with minimal government intervention would be more in line with modern day conservatisim in america, or classical liberals
They are very confusing terms for that very reason.
The spending is a relevant point, of course, to some degree. Except I wouldnt argue welfare as being the same as redistribution of wealth.. a flat (or flatter) tax system that feeds those who starve isnt really redistributing wealth to any significant degree. That just keeps the poor from starving and does little to nothing to eliminating the rich from the population.
@freemo @vnarek but most federal retraining programs have very poor track records, success rate of 15% AT MOST, usually near 0%, wouldn't leaving it up to individuals to decide what financial actions that could best releive their distress be better than having multiple layers of beaurocrats decide instead? A UBI would take the anxiety off of many workers living paycheck to paycheck, it would definitely make for better mental health overall
In my expiernce people arent very good at getting out of these situations on their own.
I have spent a huge portion of my life trying to help others.. Generally people who were homeless I took into my home and try get them on their feet many times, usually for years on end.
One thing has become clear to me. the vast majority of people are not very good at fixing their poverty on their own. Most of the people I took in, if i did nothing but just give them free food, shelter and spending money, would not change anything, in a year or ten most would (and were) in the same situation as when I took them in.
I quickly realized that the most effective way to help them is conditional help. I let them know my expectations for them (the end goal), I start by giving them free reign to become self sufficient, what they say they needed I supported financially, then as I see they arent moving towards their goals then i make conditions on them (for example I might demand they apply for at least 5 jobs every day if they want to continue living with me, or I might require they see a psychiatrist).
By making sure the help they got was conditional on the effort they invested in getting out of their situation this ultimately was what was needed to get most people out of their poverty.
Same for a UBI, dumping money in a persons lap is unlikely to get them out of poverty. They will just become dependent on that money and continue not to contribute marketable skills to society. Instead we need to make welfare dependent on the persons effort they put in to gain marketable skills. Then we may see some actual progress.
UBI will never solve these problems, its like a splash of water on a raging fire.
@freemo @vnarek yes the conditional help theiry is what is most intuitive, but the thing is that that sort of conditional help REQUIRES us to spend money on vigilance and a larger bureaucratic force. The opportunity cost of that spend money itself is part of a wastage that at the end UBI will have too, I'm saying if you take into _account_ that too, UBI is more effective; there's also a psychological effect in dependency and scarcity mentality, there was this experiment on indian sugarcane farmers where their IQ and long term planning capacity was markedly reduced when scarcity was introduced
I agree iut does cost more money then just handing someone a wad of cash and saying good luck.
I would not say that is a waste however. That beurocratic expense to ensure there is a reward model in place is not wasteful, it is in fact a good and neccesary use of money.
I am not interested in doing welfare as cheap as possible, I am happy to spend extra money on it if we are actually helping to ensure people get out of their situation rather than just have money to live another month.
The thing is, reward based welfare has never been tried.. we have never made PhDs and all other levels of education free to the poor, so we cant say its ineffective, it has never been done in the way I suggested.
But UBI has been tried countless times from countless countries. The results from those countries as far as I can tell is completely unacceptable. They have done little to nothing to actually getting the poor to be high-skilled. Largely their education/skill set remained mostly unchanged post-UBI
Just to be clear lets look at the actual numbers from UBI around the world.
Finland is probably the best bet, its program was enacted randomly among 2000 people across the whole country (rather than isolated to a specific region as in other experiments). It is also one of the longer and earlier UBI experiments in europe.
So the main question here is, did UBI help people get out of poverty as you suggest it might (more efficiently) or did it just throw money at a problem and solve nothing...
Well compared to control groups the 2000$ on UBI actually had **decreased** income after the experiment compared to the general population on welfare. On average 21 euros less than control groups. The members of the expirement did not sick education or increasing their marketable skills.
In short, they took the money and did nothing to improve their situation, or at least, did less than people who were on traditional welfare.
So yea as I said, a step backwards.
@freemo @vnarek woah! UBI is not an employment program, it's a replacement for welfare! It's to alleviate distress. Finland is not the only place it's been tested, Finland only tested it for 2 years, Alaska has had the most longest standing UBI, and its one of their most favoured policy despite being a red state. The Finland study showed improvements in mental health and generally thought better of their prospects, with mild improvements in employment
https://mobile.twitter.com/kelantutkimus?lang=en
I want to decentralise welfare and REDUCE micromanagement by the government
As I was said, I think employability is on it's way DOWN indefinitely, if I were to be pessimistic, the only employment benefits I see are either
1. They pick low paying jobs they wouldn't otherwise have considered given their newfound security
2. Went back to schooling
If I were to address employment specifically, then we have to look at[..]
@freemo @vnarek [..contd] if you were to adress employability then you have to compare it to OTHER government programs not to an _ideal_ .. most programs intended at addressing employment have either:
1.made no changes to industry, but gave retrained employees for other jobs.
(Very low effectiveness)
2.made huge changes in industry by, either bringing the economy up or increasing foreign investmen to up the need for the lost jobs
Or
They made requirements on the industry by force
The latter strategy works better and is not a good comparison for UBI,
You either address it individual level or at the industry
Ideally yes, ideally we would compare it to other government programs. But no program in the world uses the model of welfare I proposed (free education at all levels, and a reward based incetives to get people to educate themselves out of poverty)...
Since no such models exist in the real world based off my suggested approach there is no way to compare it to other government programs.
We can however comapre it to the "control" that is, see if it gets people closer or farther way from the goal of employability. As I stated UBi generally has either no impact on a persons employability or it decreases it.. Generally those on UBI do not show increased income compared to those not on UBI in countries where it is experimentally dont side by side.
No not really, that isnt a reward based welfare.. reward based would mean you get 100$ welfare default, but if you go to school and try to get a PhD then the education would be free and your welfare for personal expenses goes from 100$ to 2,000$ for example.
As far as I know there is no reward based system where the welfare you get increases while and if you are increasing your marketability.
Seeking jobs does nothing to increase ones marketability, that is not the sort of behavior i am suggesting welfare should be rewarding.
@freemo @adi_k I think the problem with this system is that those reward would mostly go to already rich people, because their position is much more stable and they got time and money to study harder.
Some people in Czech do attend school just for tax cuts. There are some schools that are really easy to study even without proper preparation. But this is more of a problem with the education system than your proposal. There is limit 28 years you have education for free then you pay to overcome this.
The whole point of reward based welfare is that if you attend school or other skill training thent he welfare would be generous enough that you would have stable income and plenty of time and money to study harder.
In my eyes if you are currently persuing a PhD for example all your basic needs should be covered so stability is a non issue.
Thats the idea, as long as you are aquiring marketable skills (for example going to university) then welfare would take care of all your living expenses for that time.
I'm not sure we would test their results, exactly.. thats one approach. The other could be just to ensure that it is accredited schools and make the stipulation that they need to pass (with some allowance for failing once or twice since mistakes do happen).
Perhaps if a person fails more than once they would need to get a letter from their teacher explaining that the teacher felt the student put in their best effort.
I generally feel that for people who are mentally incapable of higher education (say, someone with Down syndrom) then they should be given other types of training specifically suited for them.
Even a bachelor degree is a decent amount of work, especially at a university, at least if your going full time.. But then again i think it depends.
In the USA people getting a bachelor degree appear to be worked a lot harder than college in the Netherlands at least. My room mate only had to go to class one or two times a week, he seemed to have it easy by comparison of what I had to do at bachelor level.
@freemo @adi_k Not all bachelor degrees are created equal. ๐ In Czechia there is a huge gap between the best ones and the worst ones. Maybe it is the same in US.
Maybe the reason for that is when you pay your school from your own pocket you tend to focus on the studying more. So schools can increase their difficulty without kicking everyone out.
The other issue with a time limit is, what do you do when someone exceeds the limit and then needs welfare...
I'd much rather say "eh go back to school for another year then, here is some more money if you do"..
than "oh well you spent 28 years in school and still need help, here is some free money, you can get it now without school at all!"
With a good school system school is hard work, REALLY hard work. Most people should prefer to work than go to school, it would not just be good to educate the public but if structured properly should be a deterrent to being on welfare and incentive to get work with those skills.
Agreed, and to be fair the educational system as a whole would really need to be reevaluated too.
These sorts of social/economic issues we are trying to solve really require us to fix a lot of problems at every level of society.
I mean hell discrimination alone, if allowed to run rampant in a society, will mean even a well educated minority might not get paid well, for example.. So there are more problems to consider here than just education too... but, one step at a time :)
@freemo @vnarek conditional welfare has perverse incentives, there are people who would get a job anyway but the short term goals set by conditional welfare give sub-par results, a UBI gets rid of the welfare trap, conditional welfare suffers from Goodharts law, the employment officer and the receipient are both just doing it for the numbers instead of what would be best over the long term, I don't understand why you say UBI has negative effect on employment despite showing positive effect on the link I sent you for the Finland study you were referencing in the first place
I am perfectly ok with someone who would be ablet o get a job immediately instead staying on welfare and persuing a greater set of skills while milking welfare.
In the end they come away with a greater skill set and once they enter the work force again will be a much more valuable member of society.. Getting them a job as quickly as possible is not and should not be the goal, we want them to get **good** jobs, highly skilled.
Hell I'd be ok with the free education and income reward be available to everyone at every level. If someone working in a factory actually quit and received free money to go get a PhD, I'd be ok with even that.
Well considering that 1) school is hard work, more so than any job, especially at the PhD level and 2) welfare would make them far less money than a job with a PhD would get them (usually) this would mostly be a non issue. No one is going to milk welfare while at the same time doing more work and making less.
With that said if someone did decide to stay in school for 20 some years, presuming they are working hard, and getting good grades (welfare would only pay for years they pass presumably) I'd be ok with that. Someone who stays in school for a life time and just hovers at a PhD level is likely going to be doing research that is invaluable to the community and worth far more than the cost of the welfare in the first place.
@adi_k
releiving distress while making someone forever depednent on government handouts is not an acceptable purpose for welfare.
The purpose of welfare should be viewed as a means to get people out of poverty.
If you are on welfare with no intention of ever getting off of it then you should be under distress.
It is the difference between enabling someone who doesnt have their life in order vs actually helping them.
Employabilty isnt going anyway.. The world is going to keep needing employees forever into the future. The difference is just that we will need high skill people, increasingly so into the future. There will certainly be little to no use for what we see as low skilled people in the near future. All the more reason we need to improve their skills and not just drop money in their lap.
@vnarek