Welfare almost never "makes people lazy"

[Starlight]

Over the years I've always been intrigued whenever I've come across studies about the effect of giving money to poor people. eg. What happens when you just give people money? (also here)

The answer to the question of what happens when you give poor people money almost universally seems to be: Good things.

I've seen studies that look at what the people typically choose to spend the money they're given on (answer: education, business start-up costs, food for their families), what effects it has on employment (answer: some people use the money to help start their own business, others use it to get an education, so employment goes up or down only a little depending on how those two factors balance. The number of people who cease working out of laziness in response to the money is nearly always zero.)

However, those have been simply the occasional study that I've happened across personally over the years. What sparked this thread, is that economists from MIT and Harvard have recently analyzed all the studies of this type they could find from around the world that met their stringent criteria. In zero cases did the welfare programs result in people working less.

The studies found the welfare programs resulted in all sorts of improvements in the quality of life of the target groups and the areas where they lived in. But what doesn't show up in the data is increased laziness. As the article points out, other studies run in the US and Canada have found that in cases where welfare programs result in any sort of decrease in hours worked it is because people are choosing to focus on improving their own education once the pressure to work-to-survive is lifted slightly. The data seems to fairly clearly show that in most countries in the world, simply giving more money to poor people has pretty much nothing but positive results.

Is there a point at which too much welfare becomes a bad thing? I'm honestly not sure. We don't have good enough data on the subject to know. Switzerland is going to vote next year on whether to have a "universal basic income", which means a living wage paid to each and every adult in the country. I am hoping that they vote 'yes' just so everyone can observe the outcome, and we can find out whether it works or not.

[lilpixieofterror]

Over the years I've always been intrigued whenever I've come across studies about the effect of giving money to poor people. eg. What happens when you just give people money? (also here)

The answer to the question of what happens when you give poor people money almost universally seems to be: Good things.

I've seen studies that look at what the people typically choose to spend the money they're given on (answer: education, business start-up costs, food for their families), what effects it has on employment (answer: some people use the money to help start their own business, others use it to get an education, so employment goes up or down only a little depending on how those two factors balance. The number of people who cease working out of laziness in response to the money is nearly always zero.)

However, those have been simply the occasional study that I've happened across personally over the years. What sparked this thread, is that economists from MIT and Harvard have recently analyzed all the studies of this type they could find from around the world that met their stringent criteria. In zero cases did the welfare programs result in people working less.

The studies found the welfare programs resulted in all sorts of improvements in the quality of life of the target groups and the areas where they lived in. But what doesn't show up in the data is increased laziness. As the article points out, other studies run in the US and Canada have found that in cases where welfare programs result in any sort of decrease in hours worked it is because people are choosing to focus on improving their own education once the pressure to work-to-survive is lifted slightly. The data seems to fairly clearly show that in most countries in the world, simply giving more money to poor people has pretty much nothing but positive results.

Is there a point at which too much welfare becomes a bad thing? I'm honestly not sure. We don't have good enough data on the subject to know. Switzerland is going to vote next year on whether to have a "universal basic income", which means a living wage paid to each and every adult in the country. I am hoping that they vote 'yes' just so everyone can observe the outcome, and we can find out whether it works or not.

Assumes all help and giving is the same. Fails to distinguish between different types of giving and personality differences between individuals.

[Catholicity]

Ok not everyone "deserves" a living wage. Lets face it, if all you do is sit around and shoot up heroin and steal you really haven't earned or deserve a living wage. Also there are people who stay in low income jobs on purpose because welfare pays more than what they would earn if they attempted to make a living wage. (I am not including the disabled or students in this)

[Starlight]

Ok not everyone "deserves" a living wage.

If by that, you mean "not everyone deserves to live" then I don't know what to make of that statement. It would seem just obviously immoral.

If you mean, "I think a living wage given to everyone without any requirement for them to work for it would be a bad idea", then sure, I think that's a reasonable position to have. The vast majority of welfare programs I have ever come across go to some lengths to ensure people are making an effort to find work. if the people are able to work.

if all you do is sit around and shoot up heroin and steal you really haven't earned or deserve a living wage.

I think such a person still deserves to live. If you think "well it would be better for society if we let such people die from lack of money, because then we'd have one less heroin addict", then I both agree that society would probably be better-off without that person, but disagree that letting them die of lack of income is sensible (they are just going to turn to stealing if they need to, and that is going to increase crime and violence) or moral.

Also there are people who stay in low income jobs on purpose because welfare pays more than what they would earn if they attempted to make a living wage.

The one case the original article touches on where they found a problem with welfare was where their system was designed so badly that the welfare cut off immediately if any money was earned. Although I am not sure we actually have convincing data for this, I can see why you would want to make sure nobody is ever put in a situation where earning an extra $1 makes them poorer, because that would provide for a very perverse incentive. The simple answer to that seems to be: Always make sure welfare cuts off gradually - eg for each $1 earned, reduce welfare payments by 5c, or something like that. The article suggests they've encountered a case of welfare having bad effects when the rate of welfare reduction was $1 per $1 earned. Most of the studies mentioned in the OP had a zero cut off rate (increased earnings via work didn't diminish the rate of welfare at all), and that is also Switzerland's proposal (they'll continue paying everyone a living wage regardless of income).

The level of welfare we have here in New Zealand is probably about 100 times higher than what you guys have in the US. (eg the government provides housing for anyone who doesn't have it, and they pay money to anyone who is unemployed) For decades we had some of the strongest welfare systems of any Western democracy. These were cut back in the 1980s due to the local implementation of Reaganomics and neo-liberalism. However there are still 10 welfare programs, and more different kinds of tax credit for low income earners than I can keep track of. In my own (post 1980) lifetime I've never observed any clear evidence that welfare here is causing laziness, however whenever I mention the subject to my dad, who lived through the 1960-1980s period of much much stronger welfare, he always makes the comment that welfare can give "perverse incentives" where it can encourage people to work less. It is not clear to me whether that would be an inevitable result of having even higher levels of welfare, or whether it could be a problem with the welfare system cutting off too fast as the money earned increased - however historical data shows that very very few people were claiming welfare here in that period because there was full employment. That suggests to me that the number one way to reduce the need for welfare benefits is to have full employment.

I see more people in the US complaining about perceived welfare queens / laziness on the part of welfare recipients than I do here. But the amount the government provides to those who are poor and needy here is about 10 times higher than what you guys have there. What that suggests to me is that the welfare itself isn't really making any difference in terms of laziness, and that the amount of whining about it that the right-wing does is arbitrary and cultural. (And before the racists all jump in and say that the US has black people and they're the problem, let me note that we equally have racial minority groups who are less well-off who commit crime and have alcohol problems at a much higher rate.)

[Catholicity]

If by that, you mean "not everyone deserves to live" then I don't know what to make of that statement. It would seem just obviously immoral.

If you mean, "I think a living wage given to everyone without any requirement for them to work for it would be a bad idea", then sure, I think that's a reasonable position to have. The vast majority of welfare programs I have ever come across go to some lengths to ensure people are making an effort to find work. if the people are able to work.

I think such a person still deserves to live. If you think "well it would be better for society if we let such people die from lack of money, because then we'd have one less heroin addict", then I both agree that society would probably be better-off without that person, but disagree that letting them die of lack of income is sensible (they are just going to turn to stealing if they need to, and that is going to increase crime and violence) or moral.

Congratulations, you managed to take me as far out of context as you possibly could dope. If by definition you spend all your money shooting up drugs, can't keep a clean, orderly home, then no a person does not deserve a living wage. If they choose a life on the streets they ought be able to have it. Does that mean that when they come in from the cold or for a meal they should be turned away from a soup kitchen? now we're talking about two different things. YOu really are a dimbulb.

[Starlight]

Congratulations, you managed to take me as far out of context as you possibly could

I thought I made it relatively clear that I wasn't quite sure what you were saying, and dealt with various cases as to what I thought you might me.

If by definition you spend all your money shooting up drugs, can't keep a clean, orderly home, then no a person does not deserve a living wage.

It strikes me as a very disingenuous Fox News type approach to focus on the one person who is as bad as possible and argue that since that person doesn't "deserve" welfare that therefore it is justifiable to deny welfare to massive numbers of people. Why imagine the stereotypical welfare recipient to be a good-for-nothing druggie rather than a hard-working person who aspires to work and feed their family but who happens to be currently poor and is struggling to find a job? It seems to me that the enthusiasm with which the US right-wing rushes to paint the poor as morally bad people, simply isn't justified. The studies in the OP found that when the poor received money, they didn't squander it on alcohol or drugs and instead used it productively.

I am also very skeptical of your claim that anyone, no matter how bad, "doesn't deserve a living wage". That seems a very morally dubious claim to me. Unless someone has literally committed a crime deserving of the death penalty (and I happen to agree with Pope Francis that there shouldn't actually be a death penalty), then not wanting certain people to have enough money to live on seems immoral. Also, do bear in mind that if they are not given enough money to live on, they will resort to crime and end up in prison, which costs tax-payers a lot of money. In the US it costs more to imprison a person for a year than it does to give them a full scholarship to Harvard. Likewise it is cheaper to provide them a house, than it is to leave them on the street where they end up getting sick and going to emergency rooms and thus costing the tax-payer more money in healthcare than it would have cost to house them.

If they choose a life on the streets they ought be able to have it.

If you mean, "people who are hippies should be allowed to adopt an alternative lifestyle and live on the streets, because freedom", okay sure. I've got zero problem with that. But when we're talking about homelessness in general, that isn't what we're talking about, and its disingenuous to pretend that it is. Instead, if you mean "it's reasonable for society to deny mental healthcare to people and deny free housing to people and deny welfare benefits to the unemployed, to such an extent that significant numbers of people get basically forced to live on the streets because they simply have no home and no choice, or are mentally unable to make sensible choices due to mental health issues (possibly furthered by malnutrition due to lack of good food due to lack of money)"... then NO! A thousand times no. That's just plain massively evil.

To give you some perspective, the government here gives housing to anybody that needs it, and provides money for the unemployed and sick, and free healthcare for the sick and those with mental issues. (It is, of course, possible to quibble over whether the government is currently doing a good enough job at efficiently providing these things, and I do have a few choice words that are unprintable that could be said to our current right-wing government here on the subject) We don't have chronic homelessness here in the same type of way you do in America. It's pretty much non-existent. When I travel to America and I see homeless people on the streets, my thought is: "This country has failed these people. This is an urgent humanitarian crisis, and a civil rights issue. The welfare system in this country is clearly broken and requires immediate fixing. As it stands, this country is currently immoral with the way it is treating these people."

And then when I see Americans such as yourself saying essentially "no, it's fine to have poor and sick homeless people living on the streets, that's totally acceptable and reasonable," I'm like: ?!?!?!?!?!?!?! NO. IT FLIPPING WELL ISN'T. GET A CLUE. Try looking up 'compassion' in the dictionary, or reading the bible, or listen to the current Pope or something.

To give some hard numbers for comparison. Reuters this week is reporting that in the US there are currently 500,000 people homeless which is a rate of 15.7 people per 10,000 population. In New Zealand the number of homeless is currently estimated to be less than 300 people, (with multiple groups trying to determine why that number isn't zero, and government urgently working to address the situation to ensure that number drops to zero over the next 5 years) which is a rate of less than 0.7 people per 10,000 population. People here consider a rate of 0.7 per 10,000 to be a serious problem and a crisis that urgently needs addressing. In the US you have a rate more than 20 times that... I would literally consider that good grounds for declaring a national emergency and sending in the army to set up shelters for those people. Whereas people in the US are like: "It's all fine, nothing to see here".

[Carrikature]

Fair warning that I often sound harsh without meaning to. This is probably going to be one of those posts. Take the following with a dose of mellow.

Ok not everyone "deserves" a living wage. Lets face it, if all you do is sit around and shoot up heroin and steal you really haven't earned or deserve a living wage.

Is there a basic standard of living that a person should expect simply for being a living human? Does a person have to earn the ability to eat or be sheltered? Is that even possible? Who determines that standard? What pushes someone into the "you don't deserve to live" category? And at the risk of sounding snarky, does it make any sense at all for a person who believes they can never earn the eternal rewards they believe they will be given to then demand that someone else earn such basic things as enough money to pay for food and shelter?

Also there are people who stay in low income jobs on purpose because welfare pays more than what they would earn if they attempted to make a living wage. (I am not including the disabled or students in this)

But what's the problem here? That they're just too lazy, or that hard work isn't actually enough to meet basic needs? IF they can truly be trying to make a living wage and still achieve less than what the US generally considers a minimum standard of living, the problem isn't them.

[Starlight]

Fair warning that I often sound harsh without meaning to. This is probably going to be one of those posts. Take the following with a dose of mellow.

That should probably apply to my posts too. Although I do have a great deal of moral outrage when it comes to this subject. Hopefully what comes across is concern for the well-being of others.

Haha, I just noticed, half-way through responding that your post was to Catholicity and not me. Oh well, my comments still apply...

Is there a basic standard of living that a person should expect simply for being a living human?

The international consensus is: Yes, there are a significant number of "basic human rights" which should be met for everyone everywhere. The UN has compiled a lengthy list, that was signed by most countries in 1948. And those include:

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance...
Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay...
Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work. Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
...
Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

I grant that you can ask deep philosophical questions about "well does anyone really deserve anything?" and go in circles. But for me, at the end of the day what is important is that I care about the well-being of others, and I would much prefer to live in a world where everyone had everything in the above list than a world where they didn't. When I say everyone 'deserves' food and housing, I don't see myself as making a deep philosophical statement about whether all human being are or aren't deserving or whether they have done anything to deserve it, I in fact see it as being something of a statement about myself - that I am the type of kind and compassionate person who wants to see everyone else be equipped with the resources that they need in order to live and to see them given a chance to succeed at life. I see my answer to the question of "Is there a basic standard of living that a person should expect simply for being a living human?" as saying more about me than it does about them. I don't know whether anyone is truly 'deserving' or should 'expect' anything for 'being human' or whether that is even a thing that makes sense to ask about, but what I do know is that I am the type of person that wants to see other people not suffer, who wants to see other people be able to support their families and live fulfilling lives, so when you ask me if they deserve that, I flip the question in my head and reinterpret the question as a moral question about me not about them and the question becomes not whether they are 'deserving' (whatever that means, if anything) but about whether I am a sufficiently generous, loving, and kind person as to genuinely want the best for others even if it means I have to make some sacrifices myself. And I find the only answer I am able to give to that question is: "Yes, if I am not that loving and compassionate and moral already, I would certainly like to be more loving, kind, generous and moral."

(A general note: I often find this is a bit of a difference between liberals and conservatives. Conservatives like to judge others and ask "do they deserve it?" Whereas liberals like to judge themselves and ask "have I progressed yet to being the type of person would would respond with generosity and love in this situation?")

[Cow Poke]

And, yet, there's this.....

Who Turned My Blue State Red?

IT is one of the central political puzzles of our time: Parts of the country that depend on the safety-net programs supported by Democrats are increasingly voting for Republicans who favor shredding that net.

In his successful bid for the Senate in 2010, the libertarian Rand Paul railed against “intergenerational welfare” and said that “the culture of dependency on government destroys people’s spirits,” yet racked up winning margins in eastern Kentucky, a former Democratic stronghold that is heavily dependent on public benefits. Last year, Paul R. LePage, the fiercely anti-welfare Republican governor of Maine, was re-elected despite a highly erratic first term — with strong support in struggling towns where many rely on public assistance. And earlier this month, Kentucky elected as governor a conservative Republican who had vowed to largely undo the Medicaid expansion that had given the state the country’s largest decrease in the uninsured under Obamacare, with roughly one in 10 residents gaining coverage.

It’s enough to give Democrats the willies as they contemplate a map where the red keeps seeping outward, confining them to ever narrower redoubts of blue. The temptation for coastal liberals is to shake their heads over those godforsaken white-working-class provincials who are voting against their own interests.

[Starlight]

Why significant numbers of Americans are sufficiently stupid to vote against their own well-being is a continuing mystery to me. I think the correct explanations primarily have to do with extreme amounts of propaganda, a national media that has forgotten how to fact-check, a relatively uneducated population, racism, the cynical use of religion as a political tool, low voter turn-out, and the rigging of elections.

[Cow Poke]

Why significant numbers of Americans are sufficiently stupid to vote against their own well-being is a continuing mystery to me. I think the correct explanations primarily have to do with extreme amounts of propaganda, a national media that has forgotten how to fact-check, a relatively uneducated population, the cynical use of religion as a political tool, low voter turn-out, and the rigging of elections.

In other words, blame Fox News!

[Catholicity]

Carrik I do realize there are those who work there behinds off in low paying jobs and raise children and should be paid more. Low end medical care jobs are good examples of these, which pay little and have a high work demand. Others might be warehouse, farm labor, and some hazardous occupations with high turnover. I could and should exclude these when I mean "low paying, stay in welfare" I realize that these kinds of jobs see the greatest income gap and there in lies a large sign of "corporate greed" These jobs are not my intent. My intent are folks who deliberately refuse stepping stone jobs and programs to assist them in receiving higher income simply because welfare seems easier.

[Adam]

Ok not everyone "deserves" a living wage. Lets face it, if all you do is sit around and shoot up heroin and steal you really haven't earned or deserve a living wage.
Also there are people who stay in low income jobs on purpose because welfare pays more than what they would earn if they attempted to make a living wage. (I am not including the disabled or students in this)

From later interchanges I can help interpret what's meant above.
Paragraph one is sarcastic, at least for its second sentence--if it means, as I took it to mean, an attack on Starlight himself. I should not have read it that way, but one should be more careful when making inflammatory statements. So the whole first paragraph is a conservative's castigation of lazy no-goods, but not meant as an attack of Starlight.
Paragraph two Starlight can be excused for not understanding, because it's U. S. IRS tax code. We have the Earned Income Credit and Additional Child Tax Credit whereby with one, two, or three dependent children you get paid up to 9,000 a year if your income is about $20,000. You get paid nothing if you earn nothing (or earn over $50,000) no matter how many kids you have
EDITED TO ADD:
Seeing Catholicity's new post just above my own I would insert "fair-minded" in front of "Conservative" in my post.

[Adam]

Why significant numbers of Americans are sufficiently stupid to vote against their own well-being is a continuing mystery to me. I think the correct explanations primarily have to do with extreme amounts of propaganda, a national media that has forgotten how to fact-check, a relatively uneducated population, racism, the cynical use of religion as a political tool, low voter turn-out, and the rigging of elections.

Well, yes, there's THAT way of looking at it.
But when such crazy things are going on in what most of us thought was a God-fearing Christian nation, where a Christian gets thrown in jail in Kentucky (giving the victory for Governor thereby to a Republican) for being a stickler for state law and forms, where women and their children will be dispossessed when daddy divorces her and marries his "buddy" and we have a POTUS who has failed in all foreign policy decisions and yet still insists we must infiltrate more Moslem terrorists into our country.....

[Adam]

To give some hard numbers for comparison. Reuters this week is reporting that in the US there are currently 500,000 people homeless which is a rate of 15.7 people per 10,000 population. In New Zealand the number of homeless is currently estimated to be less than 300 people, (with multiple groups trying to determine why that number isn't zero, and government urgently working to address the situation to ensure that number drops to zero over the next 5 years) which is a rate of less than 0.7 people per 10,000 population. People here consider a rate of 0.7 per 10,000 to be a serious problem and a crisis that urgently needs addressing. In the US you have a rate more than 20 times that... I would literally consider that good grounds for declaring a national emergency and sending in the army to set up shelters for those people. Whereas people in the US are like: "It's all fine, nothing to see here".

The numbers sound like representing reality, but a number of problems. New Zealand is a colder place than most of the U. S. where living on the streets IS way of life in Los Angeles and probably southern Texas and Florida. Maybe Los Angeles for the dry summers and Yuma Arizona for the dry winters.
What are the definitions, and how well are they applied? Does "homeless" mean "on the streets" overnight or does it include everyone who's in a shelter? Does it include people who were evicted until they find a new place but staying with friends or relatives?
About your points of substance.
"Yes, Virginia, there are bad people." I'll limit myself to my last five years in seasonal retirement as a tax preparer.
Any number of people (particularly Blacks and Filipinos) readily lie and try and do (not through me!) claim Earned Income Credit even when they have not worked at all. Have an illegitimate child or two and a boyfriend to support her with his deals or steals and she can get the money if she lies. And some do. The penalties only go so far as not being able to get in the future what you couldn't get this year. (Which to be fair could be throwing away as much as $60,000 with three kids and $20,000 earned every year.)

And the even bigger picture. Basically you're saying "Everyone deserves to live like I do!" Maybe in the bigger picture of things, that will be so, only God knows. But God has seen fit in this world to leave two billion people in lower economic straits than what's the lowest rung for Kiwis. Why should all the goodies go to a few no-goods in your country or mine when two billion are worse off elsewhere? (Oh, and don't use that as an opening wedge against me--I'll tell all, but only if cornered.)

I see why you liberals hate capital punishment. If nobody no matter how bad can be killed, you're raising human consciousness to a right to more than nature provided. Malthus.