Coyote Blog

I agree with above, but it should be a safety net not a lifestyle,i.e. limited term. You are not a meanie; you are teaching them to fish.I see lots of recipients in my work; there should be no well able bodied males on welfare.Don't pay women to have babies (you get what you reward) and MAKE THE FATHERS RESPONSIBLE. JaC

". . . . should be made to work for private businesses"

You are going to foist unwilling workers into some poor guy's business?

That's just evil.

Nothing new here, just old ideas recirculated in a different form.

We had something very similar in Russia and all of the Eastern Block countries. All intellectuals were required to work for two weeks in a factory or farm.

China too. Anyone remember the Cultural Revolution?

The governments war on poverty has run for nearly 50 years now, making trillions of dollars disappear. All that it has accomplished is to make welfare confortable enough that welfare recipients have no incentive to get off of welfare. Meanwhile, retired guys like myself are returning to the workforce to support the welfare state (and eat).

Well it seems to me that Ben Franklin had it right a couple hundred years ago about keeping people uncomfortable living on charity. Today, there would be complaints about "The Poor", how they have gotten poorer while the rich got richer in the recent past. How unfair that those who produce nothing except replications of them self are cheated out of their due by those that produce.
The obvious thing to do is quit rewarding unproductive behavior. Problem is that doing that would result in more hungry Poor People who have no education {thank you, NEA and D pols) nor marketable skills along with a non-existent work ethic. Disdain for actual work slathered liberally (funny, that) over everything. "I won't do THAT job..."
Forcing skilled, productive employees into the miasma that some government workplaces have become helps no one. The current workers will resent and complain about a worker who is actually productive. The, the productive, will be !informed! that they are breaking the workplace curve and if they want to remain, they'd better slow down to the pace of the rest of the workers. Where is the incentive to work better, harder, or more efficiently when the pay is the same no matter what is produced, if anything...? Someone {Brooks} had better have that workplace experience on his own before touting his new idea.
tom

I support the opposite: term limits for most government jobs. Governments should set up term limits to prevent people from spending their entire lives in the state sector. Would also save on pensions if nobody could work for more than five to ten years in the state.

People burn out on government service after seeing how horrible it is, but the money and job security are great so they usually stay. Term limits would require them to leave the nest.

Of course, this would seriously threaten government employee unions, so it won't happen. Also, the entities that can make any claim to requiring specialized knowledge (finance, environment, tax, whatever) will claim that they need the 20- and 30-year employees to preserve the knowledge base and pass it on to new employees. So it would never happen. But it's not like front-line service roles in the DMV wouldn't benefit from new blood.

Not like the correlation between productivity and reward something new. Proverbs (written about 3000 yrs ago) full of that connection (cf, eg, Proverbs 6:6-8 about learning from the diligent ant, 6:9-11 about sloth leading to poverty). Proverbs also declares as reality a connection that many of the comments above assume: if people have to work to survive, they will Pr 16:26 "The laborer's appetite works for him; his hunger drives him on." That means the converse statement of that truth is also true: take away the incentive, the work won't result.

...is for the productive to teach the less fortunate how to be more diligent and productive in the context of a shared experience in an unproductive government make-work program.

Isn't it more likely that the government make-work program would teach productive people to throw up their hands in despair?

Our current system assumes that poor people are ignorant, slovenly, and lazy -- then it does all the things that would reinforce ignorance, sloth and laziness.

I would suggest that most poor (not all, and we always should be careful not to speak too generally) are fairly smart -- if you're poor and stupid, particularly in many parts of the world, you're also dead -- and are willing to work when work pays. As one sad example, the young person who lives in a ghetto and refuses to get an entry level job, but is willing to deal drugs. Why? Because the latter pays. The young person doesn't have the understand that 'productive' people have about self-sacrifice, delayed gratification, education ethic, and so on, but he sure figures out quickly that drug-dealing pays better, so that's where his hustle goes.

If solving poverty were easy we would have done it already (there's a lesson the progressives have yet to learn). But right now we send a lot of signals to the American poor that it pays to be lazy and slothful, and to ignore those parts of our society that implore him to 'better' himself. So that's what we get back in return.

I don't advocate punishing people by making them starve, or live under viaducts. But Mr. Brooks clearly doesn't understand that the reason we have so many 'poor' (who own cars, air conditioners, iPhones and Xboxes) is that this is how we've set up the system.

Steve White:

I would like to modify your comment slightly. The productive people would not throw up their hands in despair, they would just throw up.

That whole tribes argument gives the game away.
Don't all the upper class tribes send their children to diverse college campuses? Isn't diversity the whole driving force behind getting more minority representation on campus, even if it means admitting less prepared and less qualified minority students over better qualified white and Asian students?
Ask anyone who has been to college recently; there are seperate dorms and campus facilities solely for protected minorities. Administrations are constantly being harassed to expand (read: bribe) the mission of helping minorities, even at the expense of educating.
So if the upper tribes are isolated in their enclaves, and their children, when they are on campus, see the other tribes only through the prism of seperate facilities, when are the tribes ever going to meet? Maybe when they shop at Walmart?
Brooks answer: a government program to force the tribes to met each other.
Yeah, that's the ticket.

this is that same terrible argument for not allowing vouchers, that somehow the good students owe it to the bad ones to stay and raise the level of the school.

doesn't work there. won't work at the dmv.

worse, this sound terribly fascist to me. just how are you going to "force" these productive people? is this slavery?

@Ted - I am not jesting, and not questioning the principle of external motivation. What I am talking about is creating a market for work that is free of impediments. Providing for members of a society at a basic level (note that shelter doesn't mean a McMansion, free antibiotics and casts don't equal bleeding edge cancer treatments and food to offset starvation is not the equivalent of a meal in a 5 star restaurant) doesn't need to be prohibitively expensive. We're already doing so partially, but by trying to come up with hard to administer formulae for medical care and social security and tax provisions relating to exemptions for basic needs. What we're dragging along is a lot of inefficiency and a horde of useless bureaucrats. While it seems that such a proposal would add all sorts of "free" services at taxpayer expense, my bet is that overall, we'd see a reduction in costs if we drop medicare/social security and a dozen other boondoggle programs. I am also not worried about millionaires freeriding on public food trucks or a populace of slackers being content to do nothing forever. Why not? Well, for starters, I am 100% sure they'd want TV... but other than that, I much rather have people who freeride have access to the basics instead of having to contemplate a life of crime or -worse- freeriding as bureaucrats, not contributing but at the same time wielding power over folks who try to get work done. What this idea would do, is reduce transaction costs to obtain work. Nobody needs to worry about the extremes of security, and work is always beneficial.

>>> But Mr. Brooks clearly doesn’t understand that the reason we have so many ‘poor’ (who own cars, air conditioners, iPhones and Xboxes) is that this is how we’ve set up the system.

Indeed, instead of defining the "poverty line" as people who don't make enough to actually feed, clothe, and house themselves (if they lived in a typical area, NOT "anywhere they want to live" -- I'm "impoverished" if I lived in Los Angeles, but not where *I* live -- you can always MOVE!!), the current government definition is inherently envy-based -- it's set by how you compare to the top earners.

This is an inherently stupid system for defining "poverty".

@morganovich: you're not getting my point. Right now, I am losing a significant portion of the fruits of my labor to terribly inefficient attempts at doing parts of what I propose for a number of different folks in slightly different ways, with a significant percentage of the total tax I have to bear going to pure administrative overhead (that's your parasite class right there, no need to create one). Note the second part of the proposal above (less arbitrary restrictions on my freedom).

What I'd rather see is a fraction of that money spent on ensuring something that actually is of value; ensure that there aren't some folks who live disproportionally comfortable lives off my labour. I am happy with ensuring that nobody starves, lacks shelter or elementary medical care.

And - and that is the thing to wrap the big old mercantile mind around - I expect the outcome of ensuring low-level safety without complex administration for everyone to be an unprecedented economic boost. Why? Because now finally labor comes with real incentive and no unnecessary burdens. And I get to keep and spend more of my money with fewer constraints.

Me:

You seem to be oblivious to human nature's impact. If you provide a basic net for everyone, there will be millions who jump into it. To someone with a better standard of living, it seems unbelievable that many would be happy to loaf on $20,000 per year (or its equivalent in benefits) rather than study, work hard, and earn a lot more. All the government programs encourage this type of attitude.

During my visits to Hungary in the 80's, the frequent topic of conversation was "we need an incentive system". There was no incentive to do more than the minimum to stay out of trouble. They could not accumulate wealth or better themselves. Hence, nobody worked harder than necessary. It is aways a human nature problem. We all need the carrot and the stick (unless you are Mother Theresa or Albert Schweitzer).

There have been endless studies in the US re unwed mothers and their thinking. I can tell you numerous anecdotes of people I have known who loot the system. If you truly believe that these are just wonderful folks who need our kind help, you are living in fantasy land.

@Ted

No, I'd actually 100% agree with you. What I want is an incentive based system. One in which if you pick up any type of work, your are free to contract for that work with your employer as you both agree and you are sure that you get to keep the agreed upon sum and not afraid of losing anything because you work.

Hungary (and other former east block nation as well as european socialist states) are bad examples - they were all based on the idea that folks would go and convince someone to give them resources, which inevitably resulted in people lying and scheming to get their hands on "their fair share".

The idea here is to go with the "there's a place in every neighborhood that dispenses free meals" (they aren't good meals - you'd be amazed how well you can supply folks on $1.25 per person per meal though), there's free bandaids, casts, blood tests for common illnesses, antibiotics, eye exams being dispensed, there's beds with cleaning service and (more importantly) locked trunks and video surveillance to ensure that people who acquire personal property get to keep it. Heck, let's throw free "bank" accounts, maybe even "free" $100 a month to play with and a common room to round it off. That's all there is. Nobody gets any social security, medicaid, assistance etc.pp. However, if you work on top of that, you get to keep whatever you earn, minus say a round 20% tax that applies to income. No other fees, fines, taxes, surtaxes and special allocations. That'd be huge motivation - there is no poverty trap anymore (where, if you'd actually work you'd stand to lose the state benefits of being poor).

The beauty of it is that it'll cost much less than the system we maintain now, where -just like in former and today's Hungary- all you need to do to get more is to lie convincingly and the state will field the bill. Or be friends with the right people. No more huge administrations that send themselves memos about who owns whom what. Don't worry about all those laid off clerks and tax specialists - there's plenty of room for minimum wage labor in those community centers.

Right now, we spread the money I earn through redistribution mechanisms like cheap credit and insane entitlement schemes and at the same time create disincentives for work and diseconomies in distribution. This proposal would get rid of the freeriding, while ensuring that anyone has a strong incentive to work.

@Ted
No, I’d actually 100% agree with you. What I want is an incentive based system. One in which if you pick up any type of work, your are free to contract for that work with your employer as you both agree and you are sure that you get to keep the agreed upon sum and not afraid of losing anything because you work.
Hungary (and other former east block nation as well as european socialist states) are bad examples – they were all based on the idea that folks would go and convince someone to give them resources, which inevitably resulted in people lying and scheming to get their hands on “their fair share”.
The idea here is to go with the “there’s a place in every neighborhood that dispenses free meals” (they aren’t good meals – you’d be amazed how well you can supply folks on $1.25 per person per meal though), there’s free bandaids, casts, blood tests for common illnesses, antibiotics, eye exams being dispensed, there’s beds with cleaning service and (more importantly) locked trunks and video surveillance to ensure that people who acquire personal property get to keep it. Heck, let’s throw free “bank” accounts, maybe even “free” $100 a month to play with and a common room to round it off. That’s all there is. Nobody gets any social security, medicaid, assistance etc.pp. However, if you work on top of that, you get to keep whatever you earn, minus say a round 20% tax that applies to income. No other fees, fines, taxes, surtaxes and special allocations. That’d be huge motivation – there is no poverty trap anymore (where, if you’d actually work you’d stand to lose the state benefits of being poor).
The beauty of it is that it’ll cost much less than the system we maintain now, where -just like in former and today’s Hungary- all you need to do to get more is to lie convincingly and the state will field the bill. Or be friends with the right people. No more huge administrations that send themselves memos about who owns whom what. Don’t worry about all those laid off clerks and tax specialists – there’s plenty of room for minimum wage labor in those community centers.
Right now, we spread the money I earn through redistribution mechanisms like cheap credit and insane entitlement schemes and at the same time create disincentives for work and diseconomies in distribution. This proposal would get rid of the freeriding, while ensuring that anyone has a strong incentive to work.