Brandon Berg: Whether poverty…
Whether poverty is the result of bad luck or bad behavior is a very important factor in deciding how to deal with it.
Of course it’s true that how you should treat poor people depends partly on the reasons that they are poor — just as the way you should treat anyone depends partly on their virutes and vices. What I deny is (1) that there’s any reason why, if people are poor because they are foolish or bad or failures, we shouldn’t try to provide for some forms of relief for them anyway (because I don’t think that anyone deserves to suffer like that); and (2) that believing (1) or not believing (1) has any bearing at all on the libertarian arguments against the legitimacy of Social Security, TANF, etc.
If the poor aren’t responsible for their lot—if the only difference between them and us is luck—then maybe income redistribution isn’t such a bad idea. On the moral side, it’s not their fault. And on the practical side, there’s not much moral hazard. It’s not as though subsidizing bad luck is going to encourage people to be less lucky.
Brandon, this only follows if you think that moral hazard, incentive structures, moral desert, etc. are the only reasons that you shouldn’t rob one person in order to help out another. But I don’t think that: I think that robbing one person in order to help out another is immoral. Not because I have any opinion at all about the virtues or vices or the right way to treat the recipient, but rather because of the way that treats the victim. That’s the essential libertarian case against government “welfare” programs. The rest, whether true or false, is a bunch of policy wonkery, and secondary to the moral question of whether or not you can legitimately force people to go along with your favorite social programs. Isn’t it?
First, if everything is controlled by moneyed interests, then why do we still have a corporate income tax, and why do the rich still pay the highest personal tax rates?
Brandon, you are aware that there are forms of taxes other than the personal income tax, aren’t you?
Why does something like 70% of the Federal budget go towards giving money away to the lower and middle classes?
… It doesn’t.
About 19% of the broader budget goes directly to military spending (not counting legacy spending such as veterans’ benefits) and about 9% to repayment of interest on the federal debt. Unless you intend to claim that the rest of the broader budget not devoted to “giving money away to the lower and middle classes” constitutes 2% of the broader budget, it’s not mathematically possible for the Feds to be spending 70% on that.
It’s worth noting here that the two (by far) largest entitlement programs (Social Security and Medicare, at 21% and 14%) that the government maintains are not means-tested and are funded by the regressive FICA tax. Characterizing either program as “giving money away to the lower and middle classes” would be a serious error.
Brandon Berg is a perfect example about why I fear (even more than currently) for the poor under a free market system. People can’t avoid making moral judgements about others and inevitably people will want to see the poor as at fault for their own poverty (we don’t like to believe that it could happen to us, therefore the poor are morally bad or stupid or whatever). That being the case, you wind up with far fewer resources dedicated to alleviating poverty.
Jake, if you think “people” (I’m not sure whom or how many you intend to include) “can’t avoid making moral judgments about others,” and that “inevitably,” “people” “will want to see the poor as at fault for their own poverty,” then why do you trust the government to responsibly and adequately provide for respectful, helpful poverty relief?
The government’s made of people, too, isn’t it?
Anticopyright.