Biden’s $6.8 Trillion Budget Proposes New Social Programs and Higher Taxes on wealthy

[GoTfan]

I love that we have this conversation every six months and every six months we are forced to contend with allegedly educated people seeming to sincerely believe that one dying man with a brain tumor blew the lid on a conspiracy that half of society is in on.

You vile, disgusting human being.

I don't think I ever fully gauged the depths of your contempt for people who believe that people maybe deserve a decent standard of life if they're unable to work, or your capacity to be needlessly cruel. There are people who are paralysed; no use of the legs, their arms, and in some cases, both. There are people with crippling mental issues who are unable to work; I'm one of the lucky ones as far as that goes because I was never quite bad enough to be ruled unfit to work.

Yes, I happen to believe that people deserve decent healthcare, a decent wage, and a social safety net to catch them if your beloved bosses decided to simply lay them off. Activision rather infamously laid off eight hundred employees without severance right after boasting of record profits; how is that justifiable?

Biden might not be in the best physical health, but I'd rather have him running the US than an Ayn Rand cultist.

[Ferguson97]

I don’t really care about vibes or really even think the views of the individual voters you are getting is important since we aren’t a direct democracy . What matters is the views of the politicians and the policies they pushed and I’m a fan of the policies Reagan implemented and think they were great . Without the southern strategy it wouldn’t have been possible and it’s possible without it we would have had a continuation of the new deal coalition to this day or become Canada and I’m really happy neither thing happened.

I think I finally realized why the language and phrasing of your posts always feel so weird. You phrase everything the exact same way that a Democrat would phrase it if they were holding the opposite opinion as you.

"If Janet Protasiewicz wins, then Scott Walker's legacy would be undone"

"Without the Southern Strategy, the New Deal coalition would remain"

"Democrats not only repeal right to work, but also want to make union dues tax deductible"

If I heard/read these sentences being said by someone, without knowing anything about them or their politics, based purely on the language, tone and phrasing, I would assume that they were a Democrat.

Why is it a surprise that a Reaganite Republican like myself would be a fan of Scott Walker, destroying the new deal coalition and right to work

It's the way you say it, not what you're saying.

[Vosem]

I love that we have this conversation every six months and every six months we are forced to contend with allegedly educated people seeming to sincerely believe that one dying man with a brain tumor blew the lid on a conspiracy that half of society is in on.

You vile, disgusting human being.

I don't think I ever fully gauged the depths of your contempt for people who believe that people maybe deserve a decent standard of life if they're unable to work, or your capacity to be needlessly cruel.

I am calling for policies where there is substantial evidence that their enactment would make these people richer and healthier. People in this thread seem to think that this is an impossibility and instead of improving their lot society should make enormous sacrifices to keep them where they are. This is excusable if it comes from sincere belief, but at least in the US it very often doesn't seem to, which is why (for example in this thread) you see a refusal to consider the idea that less government involvement would make these people richer.

There are people who are paralysed; no use of the legs, their arms, and in some cases, both. There are people with crippling mental issues who are unable to work; I'm one of the lucky ones as far as that goes because I was never quite bad enough to be ruled unfit to work.

Yes. There are people like this in my immediate family.

Yes, I happen to believe that people deserve decent healthcare, a decent wage, and a social safety net to catch them if your beloved bosses decided to simply lay them off. Activision rather infamously laid off eight hundred employees without severance right after boasting of record profits; how is that justifiable?

The US, with a private healthcare system, sees much greater healthcare consumption than countries with public systems, where healthcare is routinely rationed in ways that it does not need to be in the United States. (Moreover, shortages in the US -- like the buspirone shortage of 2019 -- are essentially always, on closer inspection, the result of insane regulations, and of the government using power it should not have).

Are you saying that instead of Activision laying them off, the rest of society should pay enormous money and sabotage its own activities -- make itself poorer, and things like this always target poor people the most -- to keep them being unproductive? You can be outraged for a while or you can do the thing that would obviously help the most people the largest amount.

Biden might not be in the best physical health, but I'd rather have him running the US than an Ayn Rand cultist.

I imagine during your lifetime the US is going to be run by people roughly like Joe Biden about half the time and by people that roughly approximate 'Ayn Rand cultist' roughly half the time. There are lots of reasons to think that wealthy small-d democratic societies tend towards fiscal conservatism over time if they are not disturbed by very large-scale catastrophes like world wars.

[Trump Is A Maoist]

I am calling for policies where there is substantial evidence that their enactment would make these people richer and healthier

Step 1:
"Bob, I hate to tell you but, the government's repealing the social safety net. I know you're paralyzed from the neck down, and I know due to your income level and lack of work that the government subsidizes 25% of the cost of your home care. Now you won't be able to pay your rent, put food in your fridge or put water, wood and clean clothes into / onto your body"

Step 2:
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

Step 3:
Richer and healthier

[Vosem]

Step 2:
??

The economy grows significantly faster because of lowered costs of compliance, leading to generally higher standards of living and higher access to more technologically-sophisticated healthcare. Differences in growth rates over time, downstream from generally less onerous regulation and less redistributive government policy in the US, explain the difference in healthcare consumption levels between the contemporary US and contemporary Europe, for example.

[Trump Is A Maoist]

The economy grows significantly faster because of lowered costs of compliance, leading to generally higher standards of living and higher access to more technologically-sophisticated healthcare.

Translation:

GENERALLY higher standards of living = the people who don't NEED the social safety net might see their standard of living improve upwards of like 5%. The people who NEED the social safety net will die on the street like rats or cockroaches.

Translation :

Access to more technologically-sophisticated healthcare = 80% to 90% of people can't afford more technologically-sophisticated healthcare, but, for the 10% to 20% of people who can - who have an abundance of income and can afford to fly to other countries to get whatever kind of advanced healthcare tech they want - access will be easier. This is somehow worth all the terrible negative aspects of this tradeoff.

[Vosem]

The economy grows significantly faster because of lowered costs of compliance, leading to generally higher standards of living and higher access to more technologically-sophisticated healthcare.

Translation:

GENERALLY higher standards of living = the people who don't NEED the social safety net might see their standard of living improve upwards of like 5%. The people who NEED the social safety net will die on the street like rats or cockroaches.

Translation :

Access to more technologically-sophisticated healthcare = 80% to 90% of people can't afford more technologically-sophisticated healthcare, but, for the 10% to 20% of people who can - who have an abundance of income and can afford to fly to other countries to get whatever kind of advanced healthcare tech they want - access will be easier. This is somehow worth all the terrible negative aspects of this tradeoff.

No, actually in practice advances in healthcare since the 1970s have not been expensive and have been easy to mass-manufacture. If access to them isn't gate-kept most modern pharmaceuticals and vaccines are really not particularly expensive. MRI machines are expensive but stand out as an exception to the general pattern.

Over the last few decades, such upper-class luxuries as food staples and clothing have become vastly cheaper. It is not true, and it is a pernicious lie, that such growth would only help the top 10-20% of society. It would enormously help those at the bottom; after a fairly short span of time, it would help them more than a social safety net, because progress of the kind that I am describing tends to build on itself, with one discovery leading to others. The people who need the social safety net will be wealthy enough not to need a social safety net.

(My proposal isn't to, like, abolish everything tomorrow: there are lots of reliance interests and that would obviously go poorly for lots of people. It is to cut off things that most people hate, like Obamacare, and to plan to obsolesce other aspects over time so that they can be gradually shrunk and abolished when necessary, instead of parasitizing* society forever.

*This is not a reference to the people who benefit from them directly, who are basically always making the best decision available to themselves and their families. It is a reference to those who administer the programs and professionally advocate for the programs' continued existence and growth, who are making life worse everyone in society including the very poor.

[Trump Is A Maoist]

The people who need the social safety net will be wealthy enough not to need a social safety net.

This is unbearably naive. I initially thought that this comment from TheDeadFlagBlues on your political views was too harsh, but now I'm second-guessing that.

big galaxy brain vosem: in this thread, I'll pretend ... SNIP ... because I'm too lazy to bother learning about other countries or anything that contradicts my toddler ideology.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Failed lawyer advocates sweeping revolutionary program to radically transform the United States. We should trust his recommendations based on his world-renowned in studying policy issues in great detail based on sources such as blogs of amateurs who write essays and random wikipedia articles he has read. Many of the naysayers argue that the disastrous outcomes associated with decades of attempts in implementing one pillar or another of this agenda are reason to be skeptical. With the power of confirmation bias and delusional religious thinking, we can safely ignore these concerns - if only we had gone much further, we would be better off.

More seriously, I think that one reason vosem and other right-wing extremists are able to successfully preach in favor of a nightmarish Jacobin ideology is that we social democrats spend too little time arguing in favor of the many features of American public policy that are our legacy. The Great Society remains intact and, combined with useful liberal reforms, it has reduced poverty substantially. SNAP, Medicaid, various tax credits, Head Start and other bits and pieces of the welfare state keep millions of Americans out of poverty. They enable social mobility. Vosem associates himself with America but his agenda is anti-American, he wants to destroy this country's order.

[Vosem]

*shrug* It's worked ten times out of ten in the past, but perhaps this time will be different. This conversation is down to criticizing me personally (and to be sure, there is stuff to criticize; it's perfectly valid to push people to become more educated by saying that somebody needs have every possible credential), so I think absent other details I am out of this thread. Peace.

[インターネット掲示板ユーザー Punxsutawney Phil]

*shrug* It's worked ten times out of ten in the past, but perhaps this time will be different. This conversation is down to criticizing me personally (and to be sure, there is stuff to criticize; it's perfectly valid to push people to become more educated by saying that somebody needs have every possible credential), so I think absent other details I am out of this thread. Peace.

Thank you for your contributions. I can't say I clearly agree with a majority of what you are proposing in policy, but they are thought-provoking anyway and insightful in their own way.
I'd like to apologize for the conduct of some fellow red (or red-adjacent) avatars who decided to play the man instead of the ball.

[Trump Is A Maoist]

It's worked ten times out of ten in the past, but perhaps this time will be different.

Pulling the social safety net out from under thousands upon thousands of the poor and disabled has improved their lives 10 out of 10 times in the past?

[Vosem]

It's worked ten times out of ten in the past, but perhaps this time will be different.

Pulling the social safety net out from under thousands upon thousands of the poor and disabled has improved their lives 10 out of 10 times in the past?

Gradually reducing reliance on the public sector has improved societies basically every time it has been tried. Very radical and sudden cuts have a more mixed record, and usually have winners and losers, so this needs to be done slowly and with respect for everybody involved.

(I think part of what's going on here is that most progressives support building a larger social safety net effective immediately, while I think among conservatives an attitude of 'let's do this eventually/gradually' is pretty common and to some degree mandatory. Much of the difference between the anti-establishment and establishment GOP factions of 2009-2015 was not necessarily about what to cut -- leaders like McConnell and Cantor supported cuts as much as anyone else did -- but about how fast society could handle it being done. Part of the problem here is that modern rightism, of the kind I've been advocating for in this thread, is inherently utopian, but can only be enacted slowly; over time the base comes to demand faster measures, particularly in economic downturns like 2009 when it is painfully clear that the utopia has not been built yet.)

[All Along The Watchtower]

Part of the problem here is that modern rightism, of the kind I've been advocating for in this thread, is inherently utopian, but can only be enacted slowly; over time the base comes to demand faster measures, particularly in economic downturns like 2009 when it is painfully clear that the utopia has not been built yet.)

Wow, Right-Libertarianism really is Communism’s Jungian Shadow!

[All Along The Watchtower]

The insistence on the existence of hidden symbols is another interesting commonality between the American left and the Eastern European right

And the insistence on defining capitalism in an ideological way is an interesting commonality among the American Right and the European Left.

[Ferguson97]

I genuinely don't know how naïve you have to be to think that destroying the social safety net would result in an increase of standard of living for most people, but Vosem continues to surprise us.

Like what's the logic? Stop spending money on social programs, use that money to give tax cuts to businesses, and then after receiving those tax cuts, businesses will create more jobs?

[Alcibiades]

I think the problem is that, even if he can come up with a tenuous causal hypothesis, Vosem has no empirical evidence to back it up. Unsurprising, of course, because nothing he has ever posted has suggested that he has the remotest familiarity with the social science of economics.

[100% pro-choice no matter what]

Wait, how would these people "get richer" if they aren't able to work?

[Trump Is A Maoist]

Wait, how would these people "get richer" if they aren't able to work?

Typically the argument would be "society overall is lifted up" by right wing policies, but if you completely gut the social safety net, there isn't any way to make that argument. I guess maybe the argument is that there will be more quality jobs with higher pay available to the person that's unable to work them.

[Vosem]

I genuinely don't know how naïve you have to be to think that destroying the social safety net would result in an increase of standard of living for most people, but Vosem continues to surprise us.

Like what's the logic? Stop spending money on social programs, use that money to give tax cuts to businesses, and then after receiving those tax cuts, businesses will create more jobs?

Yes, of course.

I think the problem is that, even if he can come up with a tenuous causal hypothesis, Vosem has no empirical evidence to back it up. Unsurprising, of course, because nothing he has ever posted has suggested that he has the remotest familiarity with the social science of economics.

This happened in dozens of countries at different levels of development during the 1970s-1990s global deregulation wave, and there are lots of scattered cases both before and afterwards. I legitimately have no idea what to say to this post, because it implies an essentially total lack of knowledge of the last 50 years of global history; this is the story of most countries, to one degree or another.

I think this conversation has an element of empiricism vs. rationalism to it; the left-wing position that the social safety net helps poor people makes sense when thinking from first principles. The marginal value of a dollar is indeed much greater for a poor person than a rich person, so it is sort of surprising that what we observe empirically is basically always the reverse, outside of very extreme situations (outside of cuts to the public sector associated with huge economic crashes; these do not always help the public). Nevertheless, I am empirically on the side here of "things will continue working as they always have", and you guys are arguing that things will work differently because of a greater modern level of development (?), or sometimes for cryptic negative outcomes of past economic growth.

Wait, how would these people "get richer" if they aren't able to work?

They would live in a society where the goods and services they purchase, including medical ones, are of substantially higher quality, and so they would be much likelier to be able to work, and to receive a better standard of care if they cannot. Every single question you have asked me in this entire observation has the answer "but actually everybody will be wealthier, including the very poorest"; my assumption is that this will also be the answer to the next question you ask.

Wait, how would these people "get richer" if they aren't able to work?

Typically the argument would be "society overall is lifted up" by right wing policies, but if you completely gut the social safety net, there isn't any way to make that argument. I guess maybe the argument is that there will be more quality jobs with higher pay available to the person that's unable to work them.

The social safety net would be completely gutted only after society overall is lifted up -- like I've said before I don't think extremely sudden ruptures to reliance interests would go well. (Actually I suspect they kind of would in the long run, but they would go extremely poorly in the short run and there are many reasons to think that trade isn't worth it). Otherwise I don't see why there isn't a way to make that argument? I'm making it right now and I think it has been a pretty standard American-right argument over the past 30 years or so.

[Alcibiades]

I think the problem is that, even if he can come up with a tenuous causal hypothesis, Vosem has no empirical evidence to back it up. Unsurprising, of course, because nothing he has ever posted has suggested that he has the remotest familiarity with the social science of economics.

This happened in dozens of countries at different levels of development during the 1970s-1990s global deregulation wave, and there are lots of scattered cases both before and afterwards. I legitimately have no idea what to say to this post, because it implies an essentially total lack of knowledge of the last 50 years of global history; this is the story of most countries, to one degree or another.

I think this conversation has an element of empiricism vs. rationalism to it; the left-wing position that the social safety net helps poor people makes sense when thinking from first principles. The marginal value of a dollar is indeed much greater for a poor person than a rich person, so it is sort of surprising that what we observe empirically is basically always the reverse, outside of very extreme situations (outside of cuts to the public sector associated with huge economic crashes; these do not always help the public). Nevertheless, I am empirically on the side here of "things will continue working as they always have", and you guys are arguing that things will work differently because of a greater modern level of development (?), or sometimes for cryptic negative outcomes of past economic growth.

I really have no idea what to say to this — it just … makes no sense. There has been no substantial gutting of the welfare state in any Western country since the 1970s (deregulation, sure, but that is not the same thing…). For instance, even Reagan was not able to dismantle the Great Society to anywhere near the extent he might have wanted to*; the reason the deficit ballooned under him was that he was nowhere near able to cut social spending to match the huge increase in defence spending and tax cuts. To take my own country, the strongest growth in real wages in this period was seen under New Labour, with its big expansion of social spending, while pretty much every metric of economic performance has suffered under the last 13 years of Tory austerity.

Your hypothesis would be considered insane by almost every economist, including those in the conservative minority. Do you have any mainstream names or studies from within the field in support of it? Your position here seems to be “the evidence is on my side you morons, how can you not see this?” and then refusing to provide any such evidence.

_{*Regardless, the consensus among economists is certainly that the supply-side experiment in the United States was a failure.}

Edit: re: your response to Ferguson above, it has been very clear for a few years now that the Trump corporation tax cuts were used to increase shareholder dividends, rather than being used to increase wages or hire more workers.

[Drop Billionaires, Not Bombs]

I genuinely don't know how naïve you have to be to think that destroying the social safety net would result in an increase of standard of living for most people, but Vosem continues to surprise us.

Like what's the logic? Stop spending money on social programs, use that money to give tax cuts to businesses, and then after receiving those tax cuts, businesses will create more jobs?

Yes, of course.

I think the problem is that, even if he can come up with a tenuous causal hypothesis, Vosem has no empirical evidence to back it up. Unsurprising, of course, because nothing he has ever posted has suggested that he has the remotest familiarity with the social science of economics.

This happened in dozens of countries at different levels of development during the 1970s-1990s global deregulation wave, and there are lots of scattered cases both before and afterwards. I legitimately have no idea what to say to this post, because it implies an essentially total lack of knowledge of the last 50 years of global history; this is the story of most countries, to one degree or another.

I think this conversation has an element of empiricism vs. rationalism to it; the left-wing position that the social safety net helps poor people makes sense when thinking from first principles. The marginal value of a dollar is indeed much greater for a poor person than a rich person, so it is sort of surprising that what we observe empirically is basically always the reverse, outside of very extreme situations (outside of cuts to the public sector associated with huge economic crashes; these do not always help the public). Nevertheless, I am empirically on the side here of "things will continue working as they always have", and you guys are arguing that things will work differently because of a greater modern level of development (?), or sometimes for cryptic negative outcomes of past economic growth.

Wait, how would these people "get richer" if they aren't able to work?

They would live in a society where the goods and services they purchase, including medical ones, are of substantially higher quality, and so they would be much likelier to be able to work, and to receive a better standard of care if they cannot. Every single question you have asked me in this entire observation has the answer "but actually everybody will be wealthier, including the very poorest"; my assumption is that this will also be the answer to the next question you ask.

Wait, how would these people "get richer" if they aren't able to work?

Typically the argument would be "society overall is lifted up" by right wing policies, but if you completely gut the social safety net, there isn't any way to make that argument. I guess maybe the argument is that there will be more quality jobs with higher pay available to the person that's unable to work them.

The social safety net would be completely gutted only after society overall is lifted up -- like I've said before I don't think extremely sudden ruptures to reliance interests would go well. (Actually I suspect they kind of would in the long run, but they would go extremely poorly in the short run and there are many reasons to think that trade isn't worth it). Otherwise I don't see why there isn't a way to make that argument? I'm making it right now and I think it has been a pretty standard American-right argument over the past 30 years or so.

I think I'm starting to finally get you. You're Elon Musk without the Terminally Online ego.

Tongue-partly-in-cheek. Your faith in your views seems to hinge on the expectation that technology will save everyone in the end. And while advancements in technology are usually very good, for all society, its imagined inevitably can't be relied on. Perhaps you're right that in 200 years from now, we'll be close enough to utopia (emphasis on "close enough" because I reject the idea that true utopia is attainable in our mortal world) that welfare will be obsolete. Maybe. But until that day comes, we shouldn't even be considering austerity or cuts or further privatization/deregulatory boondoggles that we all end up looking back on and saying, "Huh. Removing that regulation was pretty stupid of us, wasn't it?" (looking at you, Glass-Steagall)

[Vosem]

I think the problem is that, even if he can come up with a tenuous causal hypothesis, Vosem has no empirical evidence to back it up. Unsurprising, of course, because nothing he has ever posted has suggested that he has the remotest familiarity with the social science of economics.

This happened in dozens of countries at different levels of development during the 1970s-1990s global deregulation wave, and there are lots of scattered cases both before and afterwards. I legitimately have no idea what to say to this post, because it implies an essentially total lack of knowledge of the last 50 years of global history; this is the story of most countries, to one degree or another.

I think this conversation has an element of empiricism vs. rationalism to it; the left-wing position that the social safety net helps poor people makes sense when thinking from first principles. The marginal value of a dollar is indeed much greater for a poor person than a rich person, so it is sort of surprising that what we observe empirically is basically always the reverse, outside of very extreme situations (outside of cuts to the public sector associated with huge economic crashes; these do not always help the public). Nevertheless, I am empirically on the side here of "things will continue working as they always have", and you guys are arguing that things will work differently because of a greater modern level of development (?), or sometimes for cryptic negative outcomes of past economic growth.

I really have no idea what to say to this — it just … makes no sense. There has been no substantial gutting of the welfare state in any Western country since the 1970s (deregulation, sure, but that is not the same thing…). For instance, even Reagan was not able to dismantle the Great Society to anywhere near the extent he might have wanted to; the reason the deficit ballooned under him was that he was nowhere near able to cut social spending to match the huge increase in defence spending and tax cuts. To take my own country, the strongest growth in real wages in this period was seen under New Labour, with its big expansion of social spending, while pretty much every metric of economic performance has suffered under the last 13 years of Tory austerity.

In real dollars welfare receipts in the US crashed after the 1970s, and this corresponded to a period of strong real growth. Similarly the French reforms in the 1990s corresponded with large real cuts to benefits; there was a further pension reform after this article was written, in 2020.

It is true that the Great Society wasn't dismantled; that's why we're having this conversation. But in fact there have been very real cuts to welfare programs in lots of places, and most of these indeed coincided with people coming to live substantially better lives.

The British government does not seem to think there was actually 'austerity' in the 2010s (scroll down for the graph); while it is true that spending on 'education' and 'general public services' declined, it increased for other categories (including FTM 'social protection'). Britain also decided to trash her relationships with her most significant trading partners over the same period, which makes it unsurprising that there was an economic contraction; we're not dealing with giant mysteries here.

Your hypothesis would be considered insane by almost every economist, including those in the conservative minority. Do you have any mainstream names or studies from within the field in support of it? Your position here seems to be “the evidence is on my side you morons, how can you not see this?” and then refusing to provide any such evidence.

Loads of countries cut real welfare benefits and saw rising standards of living. This is indeed simple enough and sufficiently 'common-knowledge-y' that I didn't really think it needs citation (the France paper seems to take 'everybody cut their welfare programs in the 1990s' as virtually a given), but then I'm always surprised by just how different peoples' worldviews can be from each other.

[Vosem]

_{*Regardless, the consensus among economists is certainly that the supply-side experiment in the United States was a failure.}

I don't think this is anywhere close to a consensus; governments still routinely enact supply-side policies, for instance, and recent cases of demand-side stimulus have gone incredibly poorly (consider that Liz Truss's budget was focused primarily on subsidizing demand).

Also, the Biden Administration likes to try to paint its policies as 'supply-side' even when they are fairly blatantly not so! I think it's difficult to argue 'supply-side economics' isn't seen at least vaguely positively by, IDK, the target audience of White House press releases.

Edit: re: your response to Ferguson above, it has been very clear for a few years now that the Trump corporation tax cuts were used to increase shareholder dividends, rather than being used to increase wages or hire more workers.

These don't seem contradictory? It's not like money paid out in dividends gets 'used up'; it then continues to play a role in the economy. I don't want to argue that the Trump tax cuts were perfect -- they had lots of flaws and I think it's very clear that they did increase the deficit. But in fact all three of these things happened afterwards (dividends spiked, wages increased, and the unemployment rate declined). Much of this is probably confounded by general COVID effects, though.

I think I'm starting to finally get you. You're Elon Musk without the Terminally Online ego.

Tongue-partly-in-cheek. Your faith in your views seems to hinge on the expectation that technology will save everyone in the end. And while advancements in technology are usually very good, for all society, its imagined inevitably can't be relied on. Perhaps you're right that in 200 years from now, we'll be close enough to utopia (emphasis on "close enough" because I reject the idea that true utopia is attainable in our mortal world) that welfare will be obsolete. Maybe. But until that day comes, we shouldn't even be considering austerity or cuts or further privatization/deregulatory boondoggles that we all end up looking back on and saying, "Huh. Removing that regulation was pretty stupid of us, wasn't it?" (looking at you, Glass-Steagall)

I think this is basically accurate. Things are basically pretty bad (the following numbers come from a 2015 blogpost, but I don't think they've changed much in the interim):

– About 1% of people are in prison at any given time
– About 2% of people are on probation, which can actually be really limiting and unpleasant
– About 1% of people are in nursing homes or hospices
– About 2% of people have dementia
– About 20% of people have chronic pain, though this varies widely with the exact survey question, but we are not talking minor aches here. About two-thirds of people with chronic pain describe it as “constant”, and half of people describe it as “unbearable and excruciating”.
– About 7% of people have depression in any given year
– About 2% of people are cognitively disabled aka mentally retarded
– About 1% of people are schizophrenic
– About 20% of people are on food stamps
– About 1% of people are wheelchair-bound
– About 7% of people are alcoholic
– About 0.5% of people are chronic heroin users
– About 5% of people are unemployed as per the official definition which includes only those looking for jobs
– About 3% of people are former workers now receiving disability payments
– About 1% of people experience domestic violence each year
– About 10% of people were sexually abused as children, many of whom are still working through the trauma.
– Difficult to get statistics, but possibly about 20% of people were physically abused as children, likewise.
– About 9% of people (male and female) have been raped during their lifetime, likewise.

But they used to be much worse! A few hundred years ago famines were routine even in the developed world, well into the twentieth century many places had quite high infant mortality rates; some diseases like smallpox have been eradicated outright and others, like syphilis, are now treatable when they were once unbelievable scourges (10% of the population having syphilis in developed urban areas in 1910).

Technological progress does come from the government sometimes, but this is usually in the context of military or quasi-military conflict, which in its large-scale great power variant has probably (hopefully) become obsolete since 1945. In the modern day technological progress usually comes from private parties (in biotech in the 2010s, consider COVID vaccines, from Moderna; or semaglutide, from Novo Nordisk; or the dengue vaccine, by Sanofi; and so on and so on; in information science this is even more overwhelming). This is the fundamental reason that large private fortunes, allowing someone like Musk to build things like Tesla or SpaceX, are desirable. It's true that sometimes large amounts are wasted on things that don't pan out -- consider Zuckerberg's metaverse, for a prominent contemporary example -- but this seems like a problem that corrects much faster than in government research, where there are strong incentives to avoid admitting to wrongness (consider the case of fraud in Alzheimer's disease research, largely government-funded). It should be very easy for private parties to both grow and lose large fortunes: I agree that bailouts for the wealthy and not the poor are very bad.

Ideally, we would cut the public sector and reduce regulations, leading to technological progress, leading to better living standards for ordinary people, leading to further cuts to the public sector and regulation reductions, and so on in a positive feedback loop until eventually the public sector is reduced to the smallest level possible. There are probably good reasons to think that number is greater than zero (if nothing else, capitalism really only functions in places where there is a trustworthy and competent court system; anarcho-capitalism is unfortunately a pipe dream on the level of Marxism), but it is far, far lower than it is today. Moreover, increasing the size of government, such as by creating new social programs from the beginning of this thread, puts us further away from saving all of those people. (I think new taxes to close the deficit are probably justified, and while they shouldn't be targeted at the wealthy -- that would be extremely counterproductive -- even new taxes targeted at the wealthy might honestly be better than nothing. I also think there would be a rapid electoral backlash to new taxes for the wealthy in any event; within the United States that's the usual pattern).

_{also I'm unconvinced that repealing Glass-Steagall was really such a bad move; the actions that led to the 2008 crisis were not ones that would've been regulated under Glass-Steagall in the first place}

[100% pro-choice no matter what]

I genuinely don't know how naïve you have to be to think that destroying the social safety net would result in an increase of standard of living for most people, but Vosem continues to surprise us.

Like what's the logic? Stop spending money on social programs, use that money to give tax cuts to businesses, and then after receiving those tax cuts, businesses will create more jobs?

Yes, of course.

I think the problem is that, even if he can come up with a tenuous causal hypothesis, Vosem has no empirical evidence to back it up. Unsurprising, of course, because nothing he has ever posted has suggested that he has the remotest familiarity with the social science of economics.

This happened in dozens of countries at different levels of development during the 1970s-1990s global deregulation wave, and there are lots of scattered cases both before and afterwards. I legitimately have no idea what to say to this post, because it implies an essentially total lack of knowledge of the last 50 years of global history; this is the story of most countries, to one degree or another.

I think this conversation has an element of empiricism vs. rationalism to it; the left-wing position that the social safety net helps poor people makes sense when thinking from first principles. The marginal value of a dollar is indeed much greater for a poor person than a rich person, so it is sort of surprising that what we observe empirically is basically always the reverse, outside of very extreme situations (outside of cuts to the public sector associated with huge economic crashes; these do not always help the public). Nevertheless, I am empirically on the side here of "things will continue working as they always have", and you guys are arguing that things will work differently because of a greater modern level of development (?), or sometimes for cryptic negative outcomes of past economic growth.

Wait, how would these people "get richer" if they aren't able to work?

They would live in a society where the goods and services they purchase, including medical ones, are of substantially higher quality, and so they would be much likelier to be able to work, and to receive a better standard of care if they cannot. Every single question you have asked me in this entire observation has the answer "but actually everybody will be wealthier, including the very poorest"; my assumption is that this will also be the answer to the next question you ask.

So? Even if the cost of goods goes down they will never be free. If Doug is disabled and unable to work, the fact that it costs 50% less to get a procedure done doesn't matter because he isn't able to afford it.

Or, if you don't have a job, you don't benefit from your proposed economy.