Quote:
Originally Posted by taxwonk
It's there to learn. Obviously, you have to learn what your choices are, and their impact. We would need to bend over backwards to make sure that taxpayers have an opportunity to learn.
The question is whether the state is going to act in loco parentis for a permanent underclass, which never goes away or advances because to do so puts one out of the safety net and there are no jobs any more which a person without skills can get that will pay a living wage, or if we are going to realize that the state's job is not just to make sure nobody starves or wants for an education or health care, but also to incentivize the people in that safety net to take even an incremental step out. You sound like a hedge fund shareholder or the Queen of the Netherlands: I want my quarterly dividend and I want it now.
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We've done nothing to incentivize people to step out of govt assistance. All efforts have been to force them out of it. Speeches about "personal responsibility" and drug testing as a condition of welfare aren't going to magically match an unqualified person to a decent wage job.
But even if you find that magic incentivizing policy, where are the jobs paying living wages for these new workers?
There are simply far more bodies than there are things for bodies to do. And that trend is going to increase. If you doubt me, just look at your phone, and ask yourself, "How many decent paying administrative jobs have been eliminated by the smartphone alone?" Run with that thinking for a bit and see where it takes you. It's not revelatory, of course. We all know this stuff. We see these trends. But I'm not sure we think about it enough. If we did, the need for a negative income tax would be debated in national forums, rather than in odd little chatrooms like this one.
