But yeah, I do think that it is morally wrong to let people suffer and morally right to make people happy, and I think you can create a lot of utility by taking money from people who already have a lot (leaving them with enough to buy food and maybe preventing them from going on holiday / buying a nice car) and giving it to people who have nothing (meaning they have enough money for food and education so they can survive and try and change their situation).
That would increase utility in the very short term, agreed. Of course, it would destroy the motivation to work, thus leading to a massive drop in utility shortly there after.
Well, “providing universal healthcare and welfare will lead to a massive drop in motivation to work” is a scientific prediction. We can find out whether it is true by looking at countries where this already happens—taxes pay for good socialised healthcare and welfare programs—like the UK and the Nordics, and seeing if your prediction has come true.
The UK employment rate is 5.6%, the United States is 5.3%. Not a particularly big difference, nothing indicating that the UK’s universal free healthcare has created some kind of horrifying utility drop because there’s no motivation to work. We can take another example if you like. Healthcare in Iceland is universal, and Iceland’s unemployment rate is 4.3% (it also has the highest life expectancy in Europe).
This is not an ideological dispute. This is a dispute of scientific fact. Does taxing people and providing universal healthcare and welfare lead to a massive drop in utility by destroying the motivation to work (and meaning that people don’t work)? This experiment has already been performed—the UK and Iceland have universal healthcare and provide welfare to unemployed citizens—and, um, the results are kind of conclusive. The world hasn’t ended over here. Everyone is still motivated to work. Unemployment rates are pretty similar to those in the US where welfare etc isn’t very good and there’s not universal healthcare. Your prediction didn’t come true, so if you’re a rationalist, you have to update now.
Scandinavia and the UK are relatively ethnically homogenous, high-trust, and productive populations. Socialized policies are going to work relatively better in these populations. Northwest European populations are not an appropriate reference class to generalize about the rest of the world, and they are often different even from other parts of Europe.
Socialized policies will have poorer results in more heterogenous populations. For example, imagine that a country has multiple tribes that don’t like each other; they aren’t going to like supporting each other’s members through welfare. As another example, imagine that multiple populations in a country have very different economic productivity. The people who are higher in productivity aren’t going to enjoy their taxes being siphoned off to support other groups who aren’t pulling their weight economically. These situations are a recipe for ethnic conflict.
Icelanders may be happy with their socialized policies now, but imagine if you created a new nation with a combination of Icelanders and Greeks called Icegreekland. The Icelanders would probably be a lot more productive than the Greeks and unhappy about needing to support them through welfare. Icelanders might be more motivated to work and pay taxes if it’s creating a social safety net for their own community, but less excited about working to pay taxes to support Greeks. And who can blame them?
There is plenty of valid debate about the likely consequences of socialized policies for populations other than homogenous NW European populations. Whoever told you these issues were a matter of scientific fact was misleading you. This is an excellent example of how the siren’s call of politically attractive answers leads people to cut corners during their analysis so it goes in the desired direction, whether they are aware they are doing it or not.
Generalizing what works for one group as appropriate for another is a really common failure mode through history which hurts real people. See the whole “democracy in Iraq” thing as another example.
Well, “providing universal healthcare and welfare will lead to a massive drop in motivation to work” is a scientific prediction.
I wasn’t talking about providing people with universal healthcare. (That merely leads to a somewhat dysfunctional healthcare system). I was talking about taking so much from the “haves” that you “[prevent] them from going on holiday / buying a nice car”.
Word of advice, try actually reading what I wrote before replying next time. Yes, I realize this is hard to do while one is angry; however, that’s an argument for not using anger as your primary motivation.
Of course, I wouldn’t say that the US system is free-market, because medicine is heavily regulated. I read somewhere that only one company has a licence to produce methamphetamine for ADHD, giving them a state-enforced monopoly.
Healthcare seems to be one of the most difficult areas to run under a free market.
I would approach this from a different angle. It is fairly well known that the measurable GINI level of inequality is not primarily caused by the people who are upper-middle or reasonably wealthy but by the 1% of the 1% (so 0.01%). So why are taxes even progressive for the 99,99%? They achieve just about nothing in reducing GINI, they piss of the upper-middle who may be unable to buy a nice car, and if that whole burden (of tax rate progressivity) was shifted over to the 0,.01% they’d still be buying whole fleets of cars. So it just makes no sense.
However I also think it is because the 0.01% and their wealth is extremely mobile. The sad truth is that modern taxation is based on a flypaper principle, tax those whom you can because they stay put, and that is the upper-middle.
So why are taxes even progressive for the 99,99%? They achieve just about nothing in reducing GINI, they piss of the upper-middle who may be unable to buy a nice car...
The purpose of progressive taxation is not to reduce the Gini coefficient; it’s to efficiently extract funding and to sound good to fairness-minded voters. With regard to the former, there’s a lot more people around the 90th percentile than the 99.99th, more of their money comes in easily-taxable forms, and they’re generally more tractable than those far above or below. They may be unable to buy a nicer car after taxes, and it may piss them off, but they’re not going to be rioting in the streets over it, and they can’t afford lobbyists or many of the more interesting tax dodges.
With regard to the latter, your average voter has never heard of Gini nor met anyone truly wealthy, but you can expect them to be acutely aware of their managers and their slightly richer neighbors. Screwing Bill Gates might make good pre-election press, but screwing Bill Lumbergh who parks his Porsche in the handicapped spots every day is viscerally satisfying and stays that way.
That would increase utility in the very short term, agreed. Of course, it would destroy the motivation to work, thus leading to a massive drop in utility shortly there after.
Well, “providing universal healthcare and welfare will lead to a massive drop in motivation to work” is a scientific prediction. We can find out whether it is true by looking at countries where this already happens—taxes pay for good socialised healthcare and welfare programs—like the UK and the Nordics, and seeing if your prediction has come true.
The UK employment rate is 5.6%, the United States is 5.3%. Not a particularly big difference, nothing indicating that the UK’s universal free healthcare has created some kind of horrifying utility drop because there’s no motivation to work. We can take another example if you like. Healthcare in Iceland is universal, and Iceland’s unemployment rate is 4.3% (it also has the highest life expectancy in Europe).
This is not an ideological dispute. This is a dispute of scientific fact. Does taxing people and providing universal healthcare and welfare lead to a massive drop in utility by destroying the motivation to work (and meaning that people don’t work)? This experiment has already been performed—the UK and Iceland have universal healthcare and provide welfare to unemployed citizens—and, um, the results are kind of conclusive. The world hasn’t ended over here. Everyone is still motivated to work. Unemployment rates are pretty similar to those in the US where welfare etc isn’t very good and there’s not universal healthcare. Your prediction didn’t come true, so if you’re a rationalist, you have to update now.
Scandinavia and the UK are relatively ethnically homogenous, high-trust, and productive populations. Socialized policies are going to work relatively better in these populations. Northwest European populations are not an appropriate reference class to generalize about the rest of the world, and they are often different even from other parts of Europe.
Socialized policies will have poorer results in more heterogenous populations. For example, imagine that a country has multiple tribes that don’t like each other; they aren’t going to like supporting each other’s members through welfare. As another example, imagine that multiple populations in a country have very different economic productivity. The people who are higher in productivity aren’t going to enjoy their taxes being siphoned off to support other groups who aren’t pulling their weight economically. These situations are a recipe for ethnic conflict.
Icelanders may be happy with their socialized policies now, but imagine if you created a new nation with a combination of Icelanders and Greeks called Icegreekland. The Icelanders would probably be a lot more productive than the Greeks and unhappy about needing to support them through welfare. Icelanders might be more motivated to work and pay taxes if it’s creating a social safety net for their own community, but less excited about working to pay taxes to support Greeks. And who can blame them?
There is plenty of valid debate about the likely consequences of socialized policies for populations other than homogenous NW European populations. Whoever told you these issues were a matter of scientific fact was misleading you. This is an excellent example of how the siren’s call of politically attractive answers leads people to cut corners during their analysis so it goes in the desired direction, whether they are aware they are doing it or not.
Generalizing what works for one group as appropriate for another is a really common failure mode through history which hurts real people. See the whole “democracy in Iraq” thing as another example.
I wasn’t talking about providing people with universal healthcare. (That merely leads to a somewhat dysfunctional healthcare system). I was talking about taking so much from the “haves” that you “[prevent] them from going on holiday / buying a nice car”.
Word of advice, try actually reading what I wrote before replying next time. Yes, I realize this is hard to do while one is angry; however, that’s an argument for not using anger as your primary motivation.
And yet somehow western European healthcare systems manage to result in similar or better outcomes than the US one at less than half the cost.
Of course, I wouldn’t say that the US system is free-market, because medicine is heavily regulated. I read somewhere that only one company has a licence to produce methamphetamine for ADHD, giving them a state-enforced monopoly.
Healthcare seems to be one of the most difficult areas to run under a free market.
I would approach this from a different angle. It is fairly well known that the measurable GINI level of inequality is not primarily caused by the people who are upper-middle or reasonably wealthy but by the 1% of the 1% (so 0.01%). So why are taxes even progressive for the 99,99%? They achieve just about nothing in reducing GINI, they piss of the upper-middle who may be unable to buy a nice car, and if that whole burden (of tax rate progressivity) was shifted over to the 0,.01% they’d still be buying whole fleets of cars. So it just makes no sense.
However I also think it is because the 0.01% and their wealth is extremely mobile. The sad truth is that modern taxation is based on a flypaper principle, tax those whom you can because they stay put, and that is the upper-middle.
The purpose of progressive taxation is not to reduce the Gini coefficient; it’s to efficiently extract funding and to sound good to fairness-minded voters. With regard to the former, there’s a lot more people around the 90th percentile than the 99.99th, more of their money comes in easily-taxable forms, and they’re generally more tractable than those far above or below. They may be unable to buy a nicer car after taxes, and it may piss them off, but they’re not going to be rioting in the streets over it, and they can’t afford lobbyists or many of the more interesting tax dodges.
With regard to the latter, your average voter has never heard of Gini nor met anyone truly wealthy, but you can expect them to be acutely aware of their managers and their slightly richer neighbors. Screwing Bill Gates might make good pre-election press, but screwing Bill Lumbergh who parks his Porsche in the handicapped spots every day is viscerally satisfying and stays that way.