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).

#uspol

@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 would you be in support of a UBI in replacement of all government funded welfare?

@adi_k @vnarek I dont think the current welfare model works, but I think UBI is a step backwards not forwards.. throwing money at the problem doesnt help. We need to enable the poor with proper marketable skills and mental health support if we are to see a difference.

@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

@adi_k

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.

@vnarek

@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

@adi_k

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

@vnarek

@adi_k

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.

@vnarek

@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[..]

@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