Human kindness should be voluntary
Seth cry for war, so here is mine.
I didn’t say much about political thing here, but I had my own thought as well.
Skip the rest of the post if you looking for pure WowEcon Topics. (Yet I should take care of the GoldPug thing first)
No Thanks
If you follow this blog long enough, you’ll know I share quite some political view with Seth and The Goblin.
Yet I am kinda different, I appreciate human kindness and other virtue of human (Pink thing)
Some find it a contradicting, since On the other hand I know the cruelty of uncaring, and I would never count anything on that. (Grey Thing)
I dislike (or even hate) welfare system. Not because we shouldn’t help each other. The problem is these system is inefficient.
- If I want to help others, I would, in my own discretion. Not forced, Not discount my income so that you would help someone you see fit
- When I choose who to help, I weighted if they deserved it or not. Or if there are other form of help they needed.
One may argue that centralizing the effort together is more efficient, However I am not convinced by the current state of welfare system. - You don’t know better than I do, Mr. Government. You spent tons of money on researching, yet yielding poor results. You incentive on finding an efficient way of helping those people is low, you just want to get the salaries, the money is not yours.
- Politician handout welfare as freebie, for vote buying. Covering it with “helping the misfortunes”. More on the next paragraph.
Vote Buying
No, Vote Buying is not legal, handout welfare is.
Let’s twist the system a bit.
If you vote me, everyone with the Social Security number end with a Even number or the number 3 will get $USD 100.
not so different with
If you vote me, “misfortunes” (which is 60% population) will get the welfare increased.
It’s all about incentives
In a situation that I directly help others. I would want to have good use of the money, I spend less if I don’t see fit. I’ll shop around for goods that would help them most.
Charities had incentive to be more transparent and effective, so that I’ll join their course. Which is matter to me (And, matters to the one I help, since I care them)
In a situation of some one play robinhood, the government wouldn’t… they want to use up all the granting, so that they can have same/more next year. Charities are not responding to that either, since the payer do not want to know how good they are, they just need to fill the numbers.
There are things should be organized by government, e.g. police, firefighter, those are public goods problem, no doubt.
But the welfare one is not, the welfare had drawn too high as far as I know after WWII.
This is what happening in US now
Doctors provide free/cheap medical and exaggerating, so that they can register more money from social security and company medical coverage.
Some Education institute provide Poor quality English Courses (And bad manners as well) to new immigrate, so that they can claim money from government.
Some poor people raise children that they can’t afford, because the Government will sponsor them.
This is what happening in China now
There are effectively no welfare (except for the government staff).
No one is unemployed, being unemployed means no income, means starving.
We take cares of ourself.
It’s cruel, but efficient.
Don’t Force Us to Donate
In the event Sichuan Earthquake, The Chinese from all around the world had donated a massive fund for it.
(And from other races and countries as well, I would say thank you for them)
We are not forced, yet we do our part.
Mr. Government, Get back to your public goods, reduce your intervention.
Do not make us to do what you think is important.
We know more, simply because we care.
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 at 12:00 pmand is filed under Wow Econ Research Project. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
RSS Feed
October 28th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Hi! Just started reading your blog a few days ago and based on this, I think I’m really gonna like what I hear. Keep up the good work!
October 28th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
my mouth is still hanging open from this post.
Seriously:
- Ofc my thoughts exactly
- great, great writing!
really nicely done Zekta, I take of my hat for you!
October 28th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
Indeed true. People nearby are capable of finding the difference between someone in need and someone needing a kick in the butt. Governments are far therefore easily tricked by the latter group.
October 29th, 2009 at 1:06 am
Thanks for all’s comment
@Gary
I normally don’t talk about politics. It’s once in a blue moon. When Seth talks about it. I feel an Urge to express this thoughts.
I hope that won’t disappoint you.
@Seth
I did tell my friend, I will not be a in the politics. Since I can’t look like sympathy to everyone. I may sound claim most of the time, but I had strong opinion on some issue as well
@Gevlon
That’s the point I borrowed from Milton Friedman.
More on that, Governments had no intention on finding that out (since it’s not related to their paycheck anyhow) Until someone/some party/media stress strong enough to force them rule out the weed. In which the bill payer would really care about.
October 29th, 2009 at 5:26 am
Its very noticeable that fellow “softcore” fascists like Gevlon And Seth praise you on your dramatic “insights” into the welfare state and how your hard earned income is being forcibly removed from you to fund people without jobs.
Now to bring two things to your attention.
1. I’m curretnly working part-time in a shitty job to earn money as I was made unemplyed 6 months ago. I’ve only just started so in the intervening months I availed of gevernment benefits. Am personally I am glad such a sytstem was in place. Dropping from a £30k a year job to nothing is a bit of a shock. However there is a recession on and people who are not normally welfare recipients are hacing to swallow pride and dignity to attend meeting etc to claim usch benefits. Do not cast such briad strokes with your clever thoughts on such matters.
2. There are millions of unemployed people in China right now. Many have moved home from the cities they moved to to be employed as the jobs have dried up. There is a recession in China as well you know. IF in future you are going to use China as an exmaple of all that is good in the worldd or somewhere that is an example of full employment then please do some research. However like I think you will, you’ll probably continue in future to let Facts get in the way of a little rightwing ranting, just like your Heroes posting above.
October 29th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
My view stands for itself, and as I stated in the post, I had a very different view from Gevlon and Seth. I care about people. So your “hero” terming isn’t getting anywhere.
No, in china, you can’t be unemployed for long. And I am sure many people is working even they are not registry as employee.
Every elder and kid in village work for their family (if their family is not as wealth).
Fact: I know how it goes in my own homeland.
There are also university graduate refused to get job in major city (They only want decent high pay work) . But as long as their parent or other whoever supporting them dry up. They are on their own. Lacking money to feed yourself, is a very persuasive.
And, you example miss the point on the post.
There are recession, there are misfortune. But by no mean the government should take care all of them. Helping out every single will lower the incentive of people helping themselves. And when the helping threshold is high enough, the covered the majority. The system just can’t sustain itself.
If you want to reduce risk from unemployment, buy insurance, save more. I bet people will be much more aware of these options if they know government won’t play “hero” when they’re fired. However, for whom are willing to take risk, they’ll justify which method is suitable for them. (Not by the clever government staff by anyhow)
Even worser, the “fund” now is only a transfer of income, by no mean that scheme will exist when you really need the fund, contrary to the insurance which is enforced by contract law.
And, I am not right wing, just for your interest. I don’t take that label upon my name.
October 29th, 2009 at 5:27 am
PS – Apols for the poor typing.
October 29th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
The term Right Wing I may have used to freely , however when you are supported in your views by Gevlon, a notorious Right Winger in his views then it’s easy to misconstrue what you are trying to say.
2 points again.
China has experienced unprecendented growth on recent years. However to say that the country is not suffering from high levels of unemployment is wrong.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2009-01/21/content_7416242.htm
Just because China is your homeland doesnt allow you to hold forth that your idealistic viewpoint is correct.
2. The idea that insurnace to cover unemployment is ridiculous as the cost of said cover is huge and in most cases doesnt cover the basics for what you need. In America where Health insurance is already ripping off and not even covering the majority of the population, the idea of additional insurance is mindboggling.
October 30th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Thanks for the reading, but couples of questions arise
1. Do Self Employment and Merchant count toward Unemployment?
2. How did those people feed themselves if they are included (Notice, there are no real welfare in china)
3. The report is on urban job, and factories is keep spread to inland which consider sub-urban area
4. “excludes migrant workers and farmers” in the report, migrant workers is from other suburban or rural area, which most of them don’t have work permit (much like the illegal immgarnt mexican worker) but still fill up the undesired work in the urban area. If the desired work is dropping due to change in economy enviroment, they’ll eventually had to do the undesired work them self as well.
Most importantly :
When I said Zero Unemployment, I didn’t mean China had immunity on financial tsunami. Factory Fall, Enterprise fail (e.g. The9 in wow) , but what make the people stay “employed” is that, work or starving. they had to find ways to finance themselves,
cut spending, accept lower income work. There can be temporary unemployment, but in china bread don’t fall from sky.
The point I want to make as it’s my home country is that. Our media coverage on china issues is better than anywhere else in the world (since the people in Hong Kong is highly related with what happened there)
And almost everyone had relative in main land china, and of course business…
Thanks for the comment, Long from the last time I had a long conversation on my comment session
October 31st, 2009 at 1:49 am
I agree to a point, Zekta. However I think your world view is naive. I live in a highly developed country in Northern Europe. We have combined socialism and capitalism for the last hundred years, and we’ve been at the top 5 of highest living standards in the world for at least the last 25 years. We have one of the worlds higest per capita incomes as well.
Why are we so successful? I don’t know. If anyone knew the answer to that, the world would surely be better off. But I think there’s no real answer to that question.
Conservatives in the US has always talked about laizzes-fairé capitalism as if it’s a good thing. I respect that, it’s one of the reasons why the US is the most powerful country in the world today. But when you say that your solution is THE ONLY ANSWER then it makes me laugh. You have among the worst health industries in the world, your rural areas are poor in comparison to your (mostly European) contemporarys and your rate of crime is unusually high.
Your answer to this is that laizzes-faire capitalism solves ALL PROBLEMS. But it doesn’t. When you have no health benefits in a country, or welfare, then of course people have to find a job to even survive on a daily basis. And yes, you’re right that it makes job finding efficient. However, what happens after this? If you have no formal education, preferably at a university, then you will get stuck in your poorly paid job because no one is willing to pay you money so you can go to school.
In my country, and many other European countries, we believe in welfare. We know that there are people who are poor and who have a very hard time getting out of their economical misery. We acknowledge that this exists even in our “developed” countries. So we give them money to live off, and free education, so that they can get themselves a good education.
This welfare, who conservatives in the US and elsewhere despise, actually helps the society. It is NOT thrown away money like you people say it is. It’s an investment. Welfare and taxes DOES NOT mean bringing poorness into a country.
I’m sorry for this slighly trollish answer, but I get really upset when Gevlon and his likes advocates unregulated capitalism and no safety nets, when (at least in my eyes) Europe is the most highly developed continent in the world. And we do not believe in laizzes-faire capitalism.
That’s the difference between conservatives and liberals. Conservatives see welfare benefits as a cost, liberals see it as an investment that you will get back ten fold.
October 31st, 2009 at 1:26 pm
I didn’t say it’s the only solution, this is only one of them.
I agree on the education issue, it’s investment. I am not against all taxes, some of the item had to be organized by the government. Education subsidy can be one of them, it provide externalities to the whole society (If they hadn’t been overdoing). Loan and Scholarship is a good start, where people had to pay effort on what they want. People will plan for themselves better than what government thinks are best for them. The focus is not welfare or not, it’s on how and who spending the input money is efficient. I pretty upset by the existing governments now (all over the world).
Euro and US is leading on living standard, no doubt, question is how long would that be. We had to take into account that Euro and US Wealth and technology advancement had been for a pretty long time, and Welfare in US only kicks in after WW2. I may be too optimize on china, but only time can tell
Thanks for the comment. I really love reading these
October 31st, 2009 at 5:20 am
Nice well thought out post Wall. The problem, at least in the US, is that for most people the Welfare is not temporary. Far too often, they look at how much they get for doing nothing, and how much they could earn from getting a “real” job… and make a choice. Heck, sometimes that choice is to have more kids so they can “earn” XX more money a month from welfare.
There are of course some cases where welfare has truly helped someone get back on their feet and contribute to the society. However, in the US this seems to be the exception.
Majority of welfare recipients never finished High School, which is provided FREE to all US citizens. Again, they made a choice to drop out.
On top of that, there are plenty of avenues for people that cannot afford college. Especially for minorities. In California specifically, the community college program is dirt cheap and financial aid is easily accessible.
October 31st, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Exactly…
so if we can cut a little off those high school dropper, we can had more scholarships for college student.
Now, as far as I know.
There are some people in US, having more kid, send them back to homeland before their education. And use the subsides for living. They’ll give birth to more child which they’ll rather not have, if the welfares are not exist. And effectively increased the burden of other citizen by acting so.
The system is skewed (if not screwed) by this…
Thanks for reading and the support
November 1st, 2009 at 3:38 pm
It seems like you are making two separate points about government-funded unemployment insurance:
1. You believe in a smaller government footprint in general and feel people would be better off getting private insurance and relying on their personal savings rather than on unemployment insurance funded by the government. While I certainly support people taking as much personal responsibility as they can for predictable future risks I am curious how you would suggest such a system address the greater economic impact of those who either cannot or choose not to obtain benefits similar to what they would receive under a government-funded system. One of the advantages of the current system is that it effectively transfers wealth from periods of greater prosperity to those of high unemployment. Without such a system on average people who lose their jobs in an economic downturn would have less available income, leading to less discretionary spending and a greater risk of default on their financial commitments, both of which affect not only these individuals but the greater economy.
2. You believe the system of unemployment insurance does not provide sufficient incentives for people to find a new source of income. This seems to assume several things: (a) other sources of income exist to support every unemployed individual, (b) a significant number of individuals find the difference between what they receive in unemployment benefits and what they could earn in a new position minimal enough that they would rather remain unemployed, and (c) it is possible for such individuals to continue to receive unemployment insurance without making a genuine attempt to find a new job.
With regards to (a) I am curious how you address the fact that the economy may overall be losing jobs (i.e., more people are being laid off than are being hired). There is no option for most of those laid off in industrialized nations to return to help out on the family farm or in the family business. When there are not enough jobs to employ all the job-seekers are you demanding that the job-seekers be responsible for creating new jobs where none currently exist?
With regards to (b) and (c) I am sure there are, in fact, some people who would be making a greater effort to find new employment if no insurance were available, but this is certainly a recognized issue, and each state (given that unemployment insurance in the United States at least is largely handled by the state government, not the federal government) has I’m sure put extensive checks in place to minimize this risk as much as possible (much as private insurers do to address the same issue). For example, unemployment insurance never comes close to meeting an individual’s income before they lost their job, it is limited in duration (generally six months unless extended by the government during times of significant nationwide unemployment), and it requires the individual to document their efforts to obtain new employment (and often to register with a jobs database stating they will accept any positions in their given field above a certain minimal salary level). Fraud is always a possibility under any insurance system (public or private), but unemployment insurance (at least in the United States) is certainly not a blank check encouraging people to remain unemployed by choice.
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:17 am
Firstly, I want to apology for late of reply. I did read you comment before, but I can’t spare time to reply it probably before (Sick plus Working issue, but anyway)
Secondly, I am not only targeting employment, but other form of welfare as well (not all of them though). Children subsidy is also a common abused welfare, but we’ll leave it to another post.
Regarding to b and c:
Indeed fraud can be formed in both public and private system. However, in private system, the company had a much higher incentive on finding that out while I don’t 100% sure on government staff. (Finding out fraud do not enact bonus for work nor promotion).
And also on those systems, there are way to get around it legally. e.g. Go for interview / minimum required work for a while and then quit again. The problem of the checking increases the cost of being a leeches, therefore more people will found that having a real job is a better. However, would it be simpler to reduce the welfare to counter that?
The Equation is that
Term A – Reward of working : Work Payment -Tax -”Annoyance-of-working”
Term B – Leeching : Welfare Payment -”Hassle of Welfare checking”
When A >= B, people tends to work (Note that, everyone had a different value on each sub-term)
When B > A, people will tends to take welfare as granted
Increasing Welfare checking will also increase Tax. Thus make it more likely to be reducing A and B at the same time, ofc decreasing B in a much more extend, so the checking increase work. However, isn’t it simpler just to reduce Welfare in the equation for that ?
Regarding A
It may sound naive and irresponsible, but life will always found their way around. Yes, at low economy we may not able to have a decent work after layoff, e.g. you can’t find any position on aircraft building, after a giant aircraft company fall. But you’ll always able to find a work to feed yourself.
You may need to cut costs, use up your saving etc, but hey that’s what happens to our ancestor as well. Remember how the first wave of immigrate to US live, How European survive the Dark ages. Life is harsh sometime.
Regarding 1
I admit I know little on Government intervention on economy. Therefore I can’t justify each government action is correct or not. However, Sometime wise government discussion failed. Tariff protection used to be known as a good economic protection to the industry, and sooner accepted as sacrificing consumer benefits (In the whole country). Reducing government footprint should be the default thing, since they tends to gain more power if unchecked (It’s the incentive of the government staff as well).
Market Fails, on issue like pollution, public goods problem etc. That need government intervention to set it right, usually a tweet can make the market handle that. We should always restrict government intervention into these problems however. Welfare are arguable justification for these problem.
Once again, thanks for your comment
. I really appreciate these wise comment to make me think clearer. I definitely need to learn more on the government intervention of Economic.