Are the three events exactly the same? No, of course they’re not. But that doesn’t mean the similarity isn’t interesting….
AngryBrownButch, in a post about gentrification, quotes a interview with a fashionable New Yorker she heard on the radio:
Q: Now, why do you think a neighborhood suddenly takes off like that?
Melena Ryzik: Well, it starts with the low rents. That’s the key thing –
Q: Big spaces and low rents.
MR: Exactly, exactly. And of course I think there’s also the idea for New Yorkers that you want to be the first person to discover something, so there’s a certain cache in having been maybe the first person or the first set of people living over on the Meatpacking district side of things.
# # #
Dodosville on how Europeans settled America:
In case the Europeans weren’t totally convinced that it was OK to take people’s land by force because they didn’t believe in the Christian God, Europeans also decided to redefine what it meant to “occupy” land in legal terms. This justification was probably for some of the more intellectual Europeans as it was a less crude justification than they are heathens, do what you want to them. So the monarchs, clergymen and scholars if Europe got together and said, well, yeah those people are living on the land, but they aren’t really using the land in the way that’s intended. Civilized people built settlements, planted food in the ground, had cattle and other livestock, chopped down forests in the name of progress, and tried to grow as big as they could. The Indians of the Americas weren’t doing that, well, except for the Inca and the Aztec whose settlements were bigger than most in Europe, but we’re not talking about those people – we’re talking about the hunter/gatherers who live in small tribes – those guys weren’t using the land right and it was an affront to nature and God’s plan that people used it in that way. So since they weren’t using the land the way it was meant to be used, it was terres nullus, or empty land, and everybody has the right to take empty land, by force if you have to. It was just what had to be done – it’s the natural order and all those things.
# # #
From a 1982 article in The Link, by Muhammad Hallaj:
The Zionists’ need to convince the world that their scheme victimized no one required them to maintain the delusion that Palestine was a land without people. When they sought Gandhi’s endorsement of Zionism, their emissary brazenly asserted to him that “Palestine itself was a waste space when we went there… No one else wanted it.” Even after the Zionists created their Jewish state they continued to insist that the Palestinians did not exist. “It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them,” Golda Meir, Israel’s prime minister, said after the 1967 war. “They did not exist.“
Edited to add: I’ve added bolds to the quotes to emphasize what I was intrigued by: the tendency, in all three situations, to talk about the land as if it were empty and unused. As should be obvious, by noting this similarity I am not saying that the three situations are alike in all other ways.
The “owning the land” part of being a landlord doesn’t get you any income, Charles. (Quite the converse; you owe property taxes on the land each year whether you put the land to any economic purpose or not.) Ownership, absent labor, produces negative wealth for the asset holder.
If you want to make money from your asset, you have to manage it – the fact that you can subcontract that work out doesn’t seem terribly relevant. (And speaking as someone who subcontracts to other folks for a living, “just subcontract it out” doesn’t mean there’s no work being done. Quite the contrary.)
It’s the work that creates the income. Capital is just another tool; there’s not much conceptual difference between a hammer and a hectare.
its work that creates income for the landlord, but its not necessarily his work, and it isnt the fact that he works (or not) that gives him the right to profit. Its parallel to the difference between owning a buisiness (which you can be more or less inovlved in depending on how sucessful it is, and how much profit you make) and working for a wage. your right to profit from your business isn’t dependent on work.
the distinction I’m making is is between rent income and wages. They have a different relationship to work, and I find it strange that renters had thus far been characterized in this discussion as more or less profligate, undisciplined or perhaps simply ignorant of the wonders of homeownership while landlords are framed as “earners,” and people who are disciplined planners and work hard.
with the exception of Section 8 tenants (and even then), a tenant are- almost by definition- workers while landlors, however many hours the do or dont put in, arent.
it is work that makes the money, but not the mostly the property managers work. mostly its the work of workers, who pay rent, that make landlords money.
mostly its the work of workers, who pay rent, that make landlords money.
This is a truism. It is the work of customers who pay for goods and services, that make everyone money. The renting workers get money for their jobs, and THAT money comes from other workers, too.
Capital – whether in the form of physical tools, mental skills, land, or any other type of asset – must be worked in order to produce new wealth. Idle capital earns nothing, and generally deteriorates or declines in value if left alone.
There is no economically meaningful distinction between rent income and wages.
Actually, it does during gentrification. In a gentrified market, unlike most markets, it is primarily the value of the land (not what’s on it) that is increasing so fast. When the most profitable thing that can be done with a piece of property is to knock it down and put up condos instead, it really doesn’t matter how much work was put into the thing being knocked down.
An increase in the value of a capital asset is not income.
Robert Writes:
March 7th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
Capital – whether in the form of physical tools, mental skills, land, or any other type of asset – must be worked in order to produce new wealth. Idle capital earns nothing, and generally deteriorates or declines in value if left alone.
There is no economically meaningful distinction between rent income and wages.
Correct Robert . The same is true for investent income . If I bury it in my back yard it won’t make a dime . But when I invest it by putting it in the bank or buying stocks I am actively working with that money . That’s why it is work .
some work is productive of new things people can use, some is not. I think there is a meaningful distinction between income which is in the form of wages and income which is investment income; they reflect different relationships to to other people in particular and to society as a whole.
Obviously we aren’t going to agree so I’m going away. But not because I think you’re right :)
Curiousgyrl:
What you’re missing is that saving is productive, just like labor. In fact, saving is what makes labor productive. It’s hard to get much done when all you have is a pointy stick, so we need better tools to increase productivity. For us to get those better tools, someone has to decide to put off consumption for a while and spend some of his hard-earned money to pay someone to make them.
If everyone consumed 100% of his income, we’d rapidly deplete our stores of capital and fall into abject poverty in the space of a generation or two at best, and probably much sooner.
To labor is to forgo the consumption of leisure for money, and it has the effect of making capital more productive. To invest is to forgo the consumption of material goods for money, and it has the effect of making labor more productive. Both are critical to the economy, both are productive, and both are unpleasant, in that they involve resisting the temptation to consume stuff right now. In short, both are work.
Robert,
I have a 503b (like a 401k, but I work for a non-profit). According to you and Michael, the fact that it is accumulating interest must mean that that is work on my part. I get a statement from them every quarter and I suppose you could claim that reading it is work (oh such difficult toil), but I would continue making money off of it even if I completely ignored the quarterly reports.
Some portion of rental income is used to pay for the work involved in maintaining a property as a rental, but the amount required to pay for that work is largely unrelated to the rent for a property. If you own a house with a nice view of Mt Hood that you rent for $300 a month more than a neighboring house with no view, and then someone builds a skyscraper in your sight line, and the rent you are able to get for the property drops, what connection does that have to the amount of work involved in renting the property?
Rent, wages, and investment income are meaningfully different things, both in common language and in economic theory. I’m not sure why you are trying to claim that this is not the case.
Actually, it does during gentrification. In a gentrified market, unlike most markets, it is primarily the value of the land (not what’s on it) that is increasing so fast.
I’d contest that. Yes, in areas where the buildings existing on the land will be knocked down you are correct. My neighborhood is one such; if I sold my house for the most I could get for it, the new owner would almost certainly tear it down and build a much larger house on it. But in a great many inner-city areas, gentrification is taking place in neighborhoods that were once well-to-do and then became enclaves of poverty. Because of the wealth and taste of the original owners, the buildings themselves are structurally sound and are made with materials and workmanship that would be prohibitively expensive to duplicate today. The gentrifiers buy these buildings, gut them to one degree or another, and then redo the interiors. I’ve read these stories in the Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine (complete with pictures) time and time again.
In passing; the presumption here seems to be that gentrification only occurs in neighborhoods composed of renters and of poor and/or minorities. Not so. Large areas in the Chicago suburbs occupied by white middle-class homeowners are being gentrified as well. People will buy a 40- or 80-year old 1200 or 1700 square foot home in a suburb on a 60 x 100 foot lot, tear it down, and build a 3500 square foot home on it that is masonry instead of siding that is another story taller, cast-iron fencing, expensive landscaping (on the much smaller amount of what’s left unbuilt of the lot), etc.
The median cost of housing in the neighborhood thus goes up. The values of housing in the area goes up. The property taxes go up, even for the people who still live in the 1200 or 1700 square foot homes (who now have this monstrosity next door, shading their home, etc.). People find themselves having to pay much more each year to keep the government from seizing and selling their property, even though there has been no intrinsic change in their property. People have had to sell their homes and leave, just as the renters in urban neighborhoods have had to leave their neighborhoods.
The public response has been to get the village boards to pass zoning laws restricting this practice, limiting the size of a house that can be built on a lot. Of course, zoning laws already exist; for example, I cannot build on my property closer to the property line than 10 feet or 10% of the dimension of the lot (thus, since my lot is 264 feet deep, I cannot build closer than 26.4 feet from either the front or the back of the lot). The public has forced the village boards to further restrict the size of homes that can be built in their neighborhoods to keep this from happening. The boards don’t like this, since this effectively restricts the value of homes in the neighborhoods and this restricts the amount of property taxes they (and the school district, and the park district, and the library district, and the mosquito abatement district, and the community college district, etc., ad nauseaum) can collect.
Charles, that one is a lay-up. If part of that investment is paid by an employer it is part of your income package. In other words, it is pay. Part of it is investment money. Unlike burying it in the ground that money is put into the economy and invested in various ways. Many people are offered several from which to choose or they may opt out and invest in another way. Maybe some people put no thought into these things or they toss darts. But most people put thought into it. Regardless, it consists of investment and pay.
Just like investment property it involves RISK and ACUMEN .You might think that my commercial properties simply make money by themselves . But what you miss is all the work that went into the purchase in the first place. I had to look at dozens of properties before deciding on one to actually buy. During the purchase process many of the deals fell through for one reason or another. How many nights did I spend pitching my case for a variance before some local zoning board? I could go on about all the work I did which did not result in an actual purchase. SO the income from realestate investments are the result of a culmination of work and investment which has largely been delayed .Often times it takes many years to realize a profit .
Charles:
See my comment just prior to yours. You don’t engage in a positive expenditure of effort to earn that interest, but you do abstain from consuming the fruits of your prior labor, and others benefit from that. There’s something that you’d like to have that you could buy by cashing out your 503(b), isn’t there?
I think the comparison between people that can’t afford to live in place that’s recently appreciated in value and people who land was stolen through violence really trivializes the later.
at the least its melodramatic. Like comparing a fender bender to a malicious hit and run.
joe;
I see your point, but also think that in New YOrk the simultaneous gentrification and whitening of Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn and Harlem–either of which taken seperately have been the largest “choclate city” in the country. What’s heppening here is happening to black neighborhoods all over the country. Now, on the one hand, its not like ghettoization was itself positive, but the export of poor and working class balck people to rundown suburbs removes the only positive element–cultural, geographical and political solidarity-while maintaining the economic isolation which facilitates poor housing, city services, transportation, groceries etc.
so while it is in many ways very different one could point out that this is a nationwie process having the effect of displacing a whole people.
I’m not saying that the dismantlement of a neighborhood is good. I’m saying that the difference between gentrification and genocide is so large that the comparison is absurd.
joe;
out of curiousity, are the other two examples comparable to one another?
Also in Amps defense, he is explicitly comparing the logic, not the implact?
The key difference I’m drawing is the use of force.
In gentrification no force is used. Price goes up, people don’t want to pay more (or cannot, but that gets tricky) so they move out and are replaced by people with more money. In Michigan I’ve seen this happen to ‘white’ neighborhoods that are mostly houses. My guess would be that if you tried to find the main factor in gentrification it would be money and age, not race. At least not beyond the extent that race and money correlate.
In the conquest of the Americas European’s killed and forcibly relocated everyone that was in their way.
In the creation if Israel the British forcibly relocated everyone in the Jew’s way.
I can see the comparison between the last two. (Not saying I think they’re equivalent. But it’d be a good debate. ) I don’t see how the first one is even close. Maybe in the same family tree, but far removed. Like the chicken is related to the dinosaur.
In Michigan I’ve seen this happen to ‘white’ neighborhoods that are mostly houses. My guess would be that if you tried to find the main factor in gentrification it would be money and age, not race.
Are these Detroit suburbs, or what? Sounds like the same thing I described in the Chicago area. Around me it’s mostly older suburbs (by which I mean that the housing stock is at least 50 years old on average). Young people with at least one high-income career get married and decide that they don’t want to raise their kids in the city or the close-in suburbs; school quality is the #1 criterion there. So they move further out to a ‘burb where the schools are decent and the homes are older and smaller and start gentrification. Lots of those homes are occupied by couples who are at least old enough that their kids have finished school and moved out.
In Illinois, the only municipal services tied to the village or town boundaries are the police. All other services (fire, sewer and water, elementary schools, high schools, community colleges, mosquito abatement, library, etc.) each have their own separate districts whose boundaries are independent of each other and of the village or town boundaries; most districts thus incorporate portions of a few different villages. It makes figuring out your property tax bill challenging, as each one has a separate tax rate and line item. And they all have an incentive to see gentrification progress, as it means more money for them without having to get an increase in the tax rate voted on.
I’m not saying they are the same Joe, but I think its interesting to compare. I think Amps comparison of the logic is useful.
In NYC there is an element of force in that a massively increased police presence and arrest rate for “quality of life” crimes is de rigeur for so-called “changing” neighborhoods like mine. In the time that I have lived here (6 years) the number of million-dollar blocks (blocks where enough residents of the block have been sent to prison that the state spends a million dollars to house and feed them) in the neighborhood has increased by a factor of five, despite the droppping rate of crime in the city overall, and in my neighborhood.
Its not the main factor, and it doesnt apply in every case, but its a factor.
robert,
moving from my current teaching job to a similar, higher-paying one is very different from selling a rented house out from under the renters. if i moved to a higher-paying job (which would actually be unlikely because my school treats its faculty very professionally, and i have ties to the community), i would still be teaching students, and my current students would still have a math teacher.
forcing a long-time resident to move takes away a fundamental connection to community (maybe he can only afford to live there because the local grocer sometimes lets him run a tab and he watches a neighbor’s kids in exchange for household help and car repairs). and it’s very possible that finding new housing would be extremely difficult—scraping up the money for 1st and last month’s rent and a security deposit is not easy if you’re living month-to-month and have no credit rating to speak of.
it’s also different in that i wouldn’t be using the wealth i’ve accumulated as a teacher to generate income in the same way that the owner of real estate uses the capital gains wealth he’s accumulated to pocket cash.
i don’t, of course, think that it should be outright illegal to sell land that you’re renting. but long-time residents probably ought to have legal protections that include: several years’ advance notice instead of just a few months, financial help in finding a new place, and maybe several others. i suppose the protections could be scaled in degree based on the the length of residence.
my larger point, i think, still holds: if you’re using the market to provide something you consider a right, then market forces have to be regulated, or poor people will go without their rights, which is contrary to the notion of a right.
moving from my current teaching job to a similar, higher-paying one is very different from selling a rented house out from under the renters… if i moved to a higher-paying job…i would still be teaching students, and my current students would still have a math teacher.
And when a rented house is sold out from under the renters, the real estate is still used to house people, just different people. And the renters find somewhere else to live.
it’s also different in that i wouldn’t be using the wealth i’ve accumulated as a teacher to generate income in the same way that the owner of real estate uses the capital gains wealth he’s accumulated to pocket cash.
But that’s not the analogy. The analogy is that you’re using the CAPITAL you’ve accumulated as someone who is good at math. And it is, in fact, pretty much te same way the owner of real estate uses HIS capital.
You keep coming up with reasons why it’s different, etc., but the reasons don’t hold up. It’s the same conceptual scenario.
my larger point, i think, still holds: if you’re using the market to provide something you consider a right, then market forces have to be regulated, or poor people will go without their rights, which is contrary to the notion of a right.
Yeah, I get your point. But YOU provide something that you consider a right, and we’re using the market to do it. So what regulations do you think should be in place for people who have intellectual, rather than physical, capital, and exploit it in order to earn their living?
Personally, I think everyone has a right to sports cars. And I think I’m entitled to the fastest car everyone else’s money can buy me.
Pay up, suckers.
This debate is over the nature of private property — what property is private (meaning, under the control of its owner) and what property is public (meaning, under the control of the State). If the State has a compelling interest in maintaining “affordable housing”, or whatever people opposed to the free market exchange of real estate are thinking, the State needs to compensate the owner for the value they are losing. Conveniently enough, it even says so in the 5th Amendment, not that anyone pays much attention to that …
Good points Furry Cat. I would also point out that you are not losing your right to housing when you can’t afford it. Everyone has the right to own a Rolls-Royce. The fact that most people can’t afford one is a separate issue.
We all have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Note the word ‘pursuit.’
You have no guarantee from the government to be made happy. When Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence he used a phrase coined by Adam Smith. Life liberty and the pursuit of property. The word ‘property’ is used in the original Declaration of colonial rights. So you have no guarantee to property, only the pursuit of it. If you want to rent for an extended period of time make sure you sign a long term lease. Otherwise, you are agreeing to pack your bags when the lease is up.
and, under that logic, no right to the basic human necessities: food, water, shelter, air and companionship. The question is whether it should be that way.
Michael,
I herd furry cats. I am not a furry cat that herds other animals …
Curiousgyrl,
You’re correct, in large part because what rights do the people who provide food, water and shelter have? Are they now slaves to the State? The trades person or professional can charge whatever the market will bear, but the farmer, carpenter and bricklayer cannot? Or does the State dictate the wages of everyone so that the farmer can afford to buy a house the same as the banker?
The most I’ll concede is that people have a right to not starve to death, a right to not be homeless, and a right to clean water. They don’t have a right to pick what food they want for free, to live on someone elses property for a price of their choosing, or the right to soda and sports drinks.
They don’t have a right to pick what food they want for free, to live on someone elses property for a price of their choosing, or the right to soda and sports drinks.
The common sense! It burns!
Robert,
Don’t get carried away. I’ve studied Locke AND Marx ;)
I haven’t argued any of these things. I’ll also point out that people, even in the US, do not currently enjoy the rights to life’s basic necessities, including housing, that even the conservatives here agree are rights.
I don’t think there is any ‘right’ to life’s basic necessities in the same way that there’s a right to free speech or a right to self determination. I think that a safety net is a social good because it facilitates entrepreneurship.
The US constitution was created to preserve rights and ensure the common well being. I think welfare falls into the second and not the first.
curiousgyrl Writes:
March 11th, 2007 at 8:05 pm
and, under that logic, no right to the basic human necessities: food, water, shelter, air and companionship. The question is whether it should be that way.
Again, you are using the word improperly. Since you brought up the right to companionship I suggest you use that example to understand what the word means. Yes, everyone has the right to companionship. But that does not mean it is guaranteed by the government. If you can’t find anyone who wants to be your companion the government does not have to step in and force someone to be your friend or lover. You are not losing that right if your not attractive or interesting to another human being.
The same is true for food, shelter, clothing, etc. You have the right to these things even if you can’t afford it.
By the way, it has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with understanding the Constitution and language
Hmm. I guess I’m different. In my ranking, the right not to starve or sleep in the street should be a higher, more involiable right than the total sovereignty over property. i realize a lot of people dont agree with me about that–I get it that most in our society see a greater injustice in government rules restricting the rights of property owners or businessmen of any kinds to dispose of their capital in any possible way, than in hunger and homelessness.
But this sad fact never ceases to amaze me, and I kind of hope it never does.
Charles writes:
In a Marxist view “capital” doesn’t perform work, but outside of a Marxist perspective capital does perform work. The value you receive for your 503b is the value of the “work” performed by your property.
Prior to the invention of the self-cleaning plow a plow had to be periodically … cleaned. Under a Marxist (and this is a gross simplification, and therefore invalid …) view, the work is done by “plowmen”, so the “plowmen” are who should get paid, not the “self-cleaning plow”. Yet, using a productivity measure of work performed, the “plowman” with the old plow produces less than the “plowman” with the new plow. Marx argues that the owner of the new plow doesn’t deserve compensation for the productivity increase of the new plow because capital doesn’t work.
I agree with the constitution that rights are derived from our existence as a common human family, not from a piece of paper.
curiousgyrl Writes:
March 12th, 2007 at 7:24 am
I’ll also point out that people, even in the US, do not currently enjoy the rights to life’s basic necessities, including housing, that even the conservatives here agree are rights
Of course they have those rights. Again, a right to have something doesn’t equate to being ABLE to have it. Not having the money to live in a mansion does not mean you are being denied the right to buy one.
curiousgyrl Writes:
March 12th, 2007 at 9:17 am Hmm. I guess I’m different. In my ranking, the right not to starve or sleep in the street should be a higher, more involiable right than the total sovereignty over property.
Everyone has those rights. The fact that some don’t take advantage of those rights is indeed sad.
I’ll also point out that people, even in the US, do not currently enjoy the rights to life’s basic necessities, including housing, that even the conservatives here agree are rights.
Er, no we don’t. (Well, maybe somebody else does.)
If you want “life’s basic necessities”, then go out and work to create the economic productivity that makes them possible. Or, alternatively, die.
There are people who cannot work, or whose work is insufficiently productive to pay their own way. Our capitalistic economic system combines with our largely Christian religious heritage in our society to create both the will and the capacity to subsidize these people, and to provide for their life’s needs even without them working for it.
But that isn’t a “right”. It’s charity, from the goodness of our collective heart.
What “even the conservatives” believe is that this charity is, largely, a good thing. The harm it does (moral hazard to the lazy who would rather sponge than toil) is far outweighed by the good it does (innocent people not dying in the street).
curiousgyrl: I’ll also point out that people, even in the US, do not currently enjoy the rights to life’s basic necessities, including housing, that even the conservatives here agree are rights.
Robert: Er, no we don’t. (Well, maybe somebody else does.)
If I recall correctly, Robert lives within the US and curiousgyrl does not. So when curiousgyrl talks about “conservatives here,” she is not referring to Robert or any group that contains Robert.
Oh. I took “here” to mean “this blog site”.
Whaddya mean, this isn’t the center of the universe? Blasphemy!
I think it’s both a charity and a right. A right to something relies on being able to access that thing. Saying one has access to that thing when one can’t actually reach it makes no logical sense. Like having a dog tied up and putting its food bowl in another room. Sure, technically the dog in question has access, if he had the means to untie the leash and get to the food.
If people are unable to acquire that thing, their access has been denied. Bad wording, but an as an example, someone who works and makes a decent amount of money can afford access to housing. I’m not talking about mansions and livable yachts, but housing of the common man. Someone who cannot work or work very little, for example, doesn’t have the same amount of access to housing, which is a basic necessity from the elements.
Rights are a specific types of freedoms to which all people are entitled. The right to life and liberty, freedom of expression and thought, ect.
Hard to have a right to life when you’re dying of starvation. Sorta makes that ‘right to life’ null and void. Isn’t that a reason why genocide is illegal, the right to life? Yeah, extreme example there. Sorta ends that right to life, that.
Saying that a person is free to eat when they’ve no way to acquire the means to get food is not an honest application of a right that is supposed to be established to all people.
That’s like, I dunno, saying someone who can’t tell the difference in American currency because there’s no tactile differences in the bills that they have the same amount of access when the right to use currency is invoked. They don’t.
Since humans need things to survive, housing and food (or the money to buy food) are considered rights to the best of my knowledge. Also, the state, so far as I know, isn’t in the habit of funding charity through state regulations and programs, yet they fund access to food stamps and rent money if they deem that your qualified, which is a whole ‘nother can of worms.
And while the state does manage to squeak out of providing housing or money for housing in many instances, sometimes they get nailed and they have to pay up. But man, they really seem to hate that.
I think it’s also a charity because that’s what most other programs of that nature (food, housing) also rely on the good will of other people’s donations cuz state and nation is, pardon my non-existant French, to damn cheap. I’m thinking food pantries, goodwill boxes, things like that.
Rambled long enough, I think.
a right without a remedy is no right at all–that comes from an early Supreme Court case; Marbury v. Madison if i recall correctly.
in Marbury, though, there was someone who could enforce that right (the court). AND there was someone to enforce that right against–namely, the U.S. Government.
The much-quoted and rarely-detailed “basic human rights” are a lot more difficult. It’s pretty easy when there is a right to not have something done to you. But who decides who gets a “right to housing”? Who decides what that right entails? Who decides where to enforce it?
most of all, who do you enforce that right AGAINST? “Society” is too nebulous.
A lot of what is being called a “right” here is more properly called an “entitlement”, except that lefties have decided that separating rights and entitlements makes it hard for entitlements to be approved.
There is a right to life — the right to not be killed by the state, and to be protected from, for example, foreign invasion. There is not, however, a guaranteed entitlement to food. If you happen to own some food, you have the right, in most civilized countries, to keep that food and eat it however you might wish (more or less …) because private property rights exist. This was Locke’s point — property is the most basic of all rights, and the “right to housing” comes from THAT, not from an entitlement to a free house.
What I never hear adequately addressed is the rights of the house owners in these gentrified neighborhoods. Do they just get stuck with a run down house forever?
What I never hear adequately addressed is the rights of the house owners in these gentrified neighborhoods. Do they just get stuck with a run down house forever?
Why’d they be stuck with it? The spiraling land values generally indicate a surplus of people willing to buy the land. They can sell.
I live in the US btw. I’m from Texas, point of fact. its like the US squared.
AW,
I think there remains an important distinction. I have sometimes taken to calling them “positive rights” and “negative rights” to avoid the side track of semantics (“entitlements” etc).
the distinction is this:
Most rights (however they are phrased) are, at heart, a right to prevent OTHERS from doing things to YOU. life, liberty… what those really mean is that someone else can’t take away your life, liberty, etc. A “right to be free” really means that someone else can’t enslave you. And so on. A negative right, if claimed, allows you to stop someone else from doing something that infringes your right.
I believe those rights are the traditional ‘rights” that are referred to. But for semantic ease and to avoid derailing, let’s just call them “negative rights” because they really tell what NOT to do.
neutrality or lack of action doesn’t generally violate a negative right. This is true almost by definition. Negative rights are designed to PRVENT action (why they’re “negative” rights).
“positive rights” are what i might refer to as “entitlements.” I personally see these in an entirely different class. they are rights which allow you to demand that someone else DO something (as opposed to refraining from doing something.) A “right to food” really means that you can demand someone (or some group) give you food. A “right to housing” really means that you can demand someone (or a group) supply you with housing.
neutrality or passivity CAN violate a positive right/entitlement. this is because failure to act on the part of the obliged person is a violation of the rights of the person demanding help.
negative rights generally don’t directly conflict. That’s because most negative rights translate (in an extreme fashion) to some element of “leave me the fuck alone!” Absent criminal laws, etc, it is theoretically possible for everyone to exercise their right to be left alone.
positive rights often conflict. When you have a situation where some people can demand things from others, there will always be someone who is not left alone. in other words, SOMEONE will always have to have their rights reduced in order to “make room” for someone else’s demand.
I call the second set of “positive rights” by the word “entitlement.” It fits,because unlike the traditional “rights”, the person using it is claiming to be entitled to something.
criminal laws represent a situation where a large group of people agrees to sacrifice some of their limited rights to the state, in exchange for the state protecting their rights in general. It’s an interesting exception but not really in the same category as housing.
It’s easy to think of exceptions to this. For instance, person A has a right to breath the air in her own property. Person B has a right to burn what she wants, as often as she wants, and in whatever quantities she wants, on her own property. As it happens, Person A’s property is downwind of person B’s.
Why is it not in the same category?
In either case, we’re giving up some of our rights — including property rights, in the form of taxes — in order to have other rights be enforcible.
Property rights are not meaningful without a justice system and police force, or something else that serves those functions, capable of enforcing that right. But we need taxes to pay for a justice system and a police force.
The right to eat is not meaningful without some form of food stamp or swipe card program or some other means of getting food to those who cannot buy it. But we need taxes to pay for programs like that.
What’s the difference?
As I said before, a right does not equate with an ability. Saying you have the right to the pursuit of happiness is not meaningless despite the fact that not everyone can obtain it. Preventing a person from buying the necessities of life despite the money to afford them would constitute a loss of such right. The founders clearly meant that you have the right to pursue these things, not that the government was responsible for assuring that every citizen be able to accomplish them. Note that charities and not government programs provided for the poor. There was no notion of entitlement as to these things when the Constitution was written.
People might argue that this should be the responsibility of a society. But one can’t point to the Constitution to argue their case. There are entitlements in regard to certain aspects of laws. An example would be a right of way involving an easement. Because some words have many meaning does not mean that you can choose to apply them incorrectly. Consult a rhetorician and you will see that I am correct.
A right and an ability cannot be separated. You can not excersize a right if the ability to do it isn’t available.
For instance, bearing arms. I could say you had the right to use and own a gun, but if I kept all the arms and continued to keep them than that ‘right’ is meaningless.
Happiness is subjective, as such it relies on the judgment of the individual attempting to obtain it and the judgment on wether or not it has been achieved. The right to the persuit of happiness is blocked if that happiness violates other rights. I don’t believe it does. The right to life is not subjective in such a sense as there are medical definitions within the states that define the condition known as ‘life.’ Its opposite is ‘death’ which can also be viewed in medical terms. Since happiness is not a measurable state and life is, denying what promotes or ‘gives’ life to an individual is why I consider it a violation.
(I say death to accentuate that I’m talking about the definition of life, not a subjective belief like happiness. ‘Quality of life’ is a bit different, and while it is also subjective, in this case it doesn’t particularly matter.)
It would only constitute the loss of such a right if the individual(s) in question agreed that the prevention infringed on their pursuit of happiness, since individual happiness is subjective.
If the founder’s statements were clear we wouldn’t be having this discussion as it relates to the 21st century. The constitution has been interpreted many times in various and sometimes contradictory and conflicting ways by the many people who get paid to interpret it as it relates to current situation(s) in the Usa. If I could go back in time and ask the founding fathers how, exactly, they would interpret this thread and what their judgment would be when applying the Constitution and it turned out that they agreed with you, then I would conceed the point.
However, it seems to me, after taking much to long a time to reread the Declaration of Independence, that John Hancock & Co. seem to agree with me.
It doesn’t look like it says they’re denying it to me, since the founders pledged what they have to each other. Since such a pledge was made it a people’s document, why wouldn’t it be also be applicable for the people?
Since such a pledge was made it a people’s document, why wouldn’t it be also be applicable for the people?
Because they were promising to fight a war together, not (at that moment) establishing the nature of the state which would evolve in the event of a successful prosecution of that war.
Now we reach the heart of the matters.
See, in technical philosophical terms, I *AM* a libertarian, because I disagree with amp. I DO see a differnece between a negative right and a positive right. I absolutely see that people have deontological, moral right not to be hit by other people that exists prior to the ogvernment and which the government secures, but does not grant.
However, first, negative rights CAN conflict. In nature, I have a negative right to walk where I want to, and so do you. However, we can nnot occupy the same physical space. Conflict.
Which leads to the bigger problem for the right. External property rights – rights to things other than your own body, the way we manage the conflict of negative rights – are a POSITIVE right. A right to own land, or a car, or a copyright, is a right to have the government threaten violence against those who do not respect your exclusive usage. External property rights are NECESSARY to manage conflicting negative rights, but they are a coersive interference with negative rights nonetheless. And for this, the dispossessed deserve compensation.
This is where I see a basic income as a fundimentally negative right, or more properly, a negative duty on the part of the government and property owners to compensate the forcibly disposessed. If you are a homeless person, the government owes you food (or cash) because it is the property laws the government creates and coersively enforces against you that is preventing you from growing your own food.
To answer the obvious question – the difference between your body and external property is that you are “stuck” in your body. Keanu Reeves owes me – and the rest of the world – compensation for denying us the negative right to the use of the land his home is on. If he did not occupy it, we could use it for our pleasure, and he could go somewhere else. But he owes us nothing for denying us any negative right to use his body for our pleasure, because if we exercised such a right without his consent, he would be forced to experience the event and not do otherwise as he pleases, because he is “trapped” in his body.
Amp, the classic example of the conflict between the rights of different people is
“The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.”
— Oliver Wendell Holmes
You’re right that our society has to try to balance rights. My right to property is balanced against the need to funds to support necessary government services.
The fight starts at the word necessary. Military? Yes. Courts? Yes Healthcare that includes a daily relaxation massage for stress relief?… (yeah that’s silly)
I’m going to move on from the discussion of rights. If people are really interested try this site.. They love this sort of thing.
But are people really saying that people displaced by increased rents brought on by gentrification are being denied a right?
My understanding is that typically people who can’t afford the rent find a place that they can afford. It might not be as nice, it might not be where they want to live but they still have shelter. How have they lost either a right, or the ability to exercise that right? (note: I know that homelessness is a real problem, but I don’t think that’s the point in question.)
Also, how is being forced by circumstance to live in their 2nd choice for housing at all similar to a multi-generational war of conquest?
Amp writes:
Does everyone get one of those swipe cards? No?
Didn’t think so.
So how is “free food” like “free speech”? Although both use the word “free”, one refers to liberty and the other to price. Freedom of choice doesn’t mean the choices have no economic consequences, only that one is able to make their own choices.
Furrycatherder,
Many people have proposed a Basic Income program. Under such a program, everyone would in effect get one of those swipe cards. (Although it wouldn’t be just for food, it would be for all expenses).
What’s similar is that in both cases, the language used by the new occupiers tends to pretend that the space they were moving into was empty. That similarity is, to me, interesting, and it’s why I wrote this post.
A lot of people seem not to have gotten that, despite the title of this post. I think I’ll go and bold some text in the quotes, to make things clearer.
As for “rights,” I’m pretty cynical about that. In practice, people have whatever rights their society is willing to recognize and enforce. In any case, I don’t think it’s useful to describe all issues in terms of “rights.” I don’t think that people have a “right” akin to the right to free speech to have traffic slow down in residential areas, but I do think that laws encouraging slow traffic in residential areas can often be beneficial.
The question regarding gentrification isn’t what rights we have so much as it is what we choose to value in communities. Do we think there’s a value in a middle-class couple beinig able to live in the same community for fifty years? Is there a value in young folks starting out being able to live near their community and family, rather than having to move out of the daily life of their parents’ and relatives’ community in order to find a place they can afford to live? Does cultural continuity have value?
If enough people who vote think the answer to these questions is “yes,” then it makes sense to try an act to prevent gentrification from becoming an overwhelming factor, unless what we have to do to prevent or mitigate gentrification will cause even more harm than gentrification itself.
Fair enough, Amp.
Would this be a value only for persons of color, or for poor people, or would this be a value we would defend for everybody? (And if not, why not?)
I live in a very wealthy California suburb, and houses in our town are now out of the price range of 99% of the children who grew up here. There has been a certain amount of local ink spilled on this situation, but no solid workable solutions have emerged, and the kids, including my kids, are accordingly moving away.
Can we do anything about this? Should we do anything about it? (And if the answer is Yes, what exactly would you suggest?) Is all this OK because all the people involved are quite well off, and if so, why is that? Are poor communities, are poor families, somehow more valuable than wealthy ones?
Or is all this just a perhaps regrettable result of market forces, forces which we believe, in the long run, will provide better housing for everyone? Or at any rate, forces we’re not sure what we can or should do anything to thwart?
Thought-provoking. This reminds me of Shelley v. Kraemer. The court held that homeowners have the right to enter into contracts with their neighbors agreeing not to sell their houses to black, Catholics, Jews, etc; after all, there’s nothing illegal in private parties discriminating. BUT a court will not enforce those contracts, because there is something illegal about government discriminating, even if the discrimination is merely to enforce private contracts.
I also share the view that government should tax property. First, government should tax rents wherever it can just to raise revenues. (“Rent,” in the economic sense of money that can be extracted without altering other economic choices. For example, how high could we tax the income of professional athletes before you would cause them to quit and pursue a different profession? THAT amount is economic rent. Rents are the most efficient (that is, least inefficient) thing to tax.)
Secondly, a government that taxes income should tax property, because property bestows benefits on its owner that is, in function, a stream of income. By owning a house, I conceptually provide housing services to myself, and conceptually pay rent to myself in return. I should therefore have to pay taxes on the rent that would be imputed to me (offset by maintenance costs, depreciation, etc.) The same analysis would apply to my car, my lawn mower, my pencil, etc.
Whether government would use these revenues to provide a social safety net is a wholly separate question for me. But you draw an interesting connection.
Ampersand writes:
Does this mean that after I get my card I can quit my day job and life off my swipe card and retirement savings?
I’m having a hard time understanding why, or how, the government would do this, and who exactly would pay for it.
I’m all for social safety nets, really I am. But I’m not for a program that does what I think is destroy the incentive to be self-supporting. For those who can’t work, sure — food, clothing, shelter, transportation, entertainment stipend. For those who won’t? Enjoy sleeping under that bridge — you might even find some refrigerator-sized cardboard boxes behind the local appliance store. Happy dumpster diving!
Ampersand writes:
But who enforces those “values” and how?
For some odd reason — really, no clue why — homes in my own personal neighborhood have not appreciated much in value, relative to surrounding areas. My house has increased in value 8% in 7 years time. Which is to say, adjusting for inflation it’s gone down in value. If that continues, and I don’t know why it’s happening, so I don’t know when or if it will stop, I imagine people might move away because they view their house as an investment, and getting upside down on a 30 year mortgage is just not fun. But what happens when the market bottoms and prices start rising? Does someone get to say “No, you can’t sell for what you want because then the kids of the parents can’t afford to buy”?
I’d really like some answers to these basic questions. Other than wagging our fingers, how do you see ending gentrification happening?
Furry, where do you live, maybe we can all afford to move there!
Seriously, government price controls on homes are almost certain to make a horrendous mess of things, if only because government is inherently inefficient.
While we’re talking about “values”, isn’t it a value for a person to work for the same company in the same location for all their working lives? Does that mean we’ll prohibit the company from ever firing anyone, and prohibit workers from leaving for greener pastures? Oh and somehow or other, probably with tax money, prevent this company from going bankrupt?
I believe that this kind of thing was tried. Extensively. It didn’t work very well, to say the least.
“Inherently inefficient?” No more so than any other large-scale endeavor is. There are some services which the government provides more efficiently than the private market (most famously, medical care).
Opponents of government tend to talk in terms of “prohibiting” things, as if the government’s only means of effecting the economy is the use of outright bans. This is not true.
I don’t believe that the US government has ever tried the policy you suggest (“we’ll prohibit the company from ever firing anyone, and prohibit workers from leaving for greener pastures”).
Does this mean that after I get my card I can quit my day job and life off my swipe card and retirement savings?
Can you? Sure. But why would you? If you work, you get more money. And the can’t work / wont’ work distinction you favor provides perverse incentives AGAINST work. We could have armchair speculations about this all day, but there have actually been well-done social experiments about this, best summarized at:
http://usbig.net/papers/086-Levine-et-al-NIT-session.doc
Bottom line: A 13% work disincentive on an average take-back rate of 50%. The work disincentive rate does appear to rise and fall with the take back rate. The work disincentives appear to result mostly from territery workers (teens) dropping out of work to concentrate on school (The program was a very cost – effective anti-school drop our program, and it raised grades), secondary workers (moms) dropping out to focus more on the children (infant mortality and children’s health problems decreased), and primary workers dropping second jobs or taking longer to find work when looking for work. Not one example was found in the experiments of a primary worker dropping out of work altogether.
I don’t think it’s possible, or even desirable, to completely “end gentrification” (although I guess it depends on how gentrification is defined). I do think it’s possible to mitigate the effects of gentrification, to a limited degree. (But please read what I said in comment #32 of this thread).
Take rent control, for example. No one nowadays — or at least, no one really familiar with the issue — proposes a total freeze on rents, or on sales. What a modern rent control policy is likely to consist of a combination of policies such as:
1) Rules limiting how much rent can be raised, calculated to allow landlords to receive a return similar to that which would be expected on similar-risk investments, after paying for maintaining of the property.
2) A mechanism for tenants to complain about landlords who refuse to maintain their properties to a reasonable living standard.
3) Laws limiting evictions without good cause.
4) Limits on sales to convert existing rental properties into either commercial properties or into condos.
5) Exemptions to the rent control rules for housing built on lots that were previously non-residential or vacant properties.
That’s obviously oversimplified, but my point is that to describe rent control as rules saying “no one can raise rent, no one can sell” is unrealistic.
There are also other policies which can be used. For instance, local governments can subsidize or guarantee low-interest loans to allow long-time neighborhood renters to buy homes in the same area.
Thank you, Decnavda!
Okay, got it. I wasn’t criticizing you for writing it. (at least that wasn’t my intent) I just think that the comparison is flawed due to the different levels of violence.
Decnavad writes:
I suspect those studies did something that a lot of such studies do — it focused on people it wanted to “Help” and ignored anyone who might find an interesting use for such a program.
The short answer to your question is that, with the exception of week long or so vacations, I’ve worked every work day of my life for 33 years running, from the time I was 12. I’m tired and I’d like a break without knowing that doing so would mean I have to dip too far into the money that’s supposed to last into my old age.
Some companies in high tech used to offer sabbaticals of various sorts, with some allowing senior level researchers a chance to teach for one or two years, others (I believe Tandem Computers was one, but they were bought by Compaq who was then bought by H-P, so I don’t know any Tandem workers I could ask) provided a sabbatical with pay, and others (such as mine) allow unpaid leaves of absence. For two wage earner families, leaves of absence are slightly popular, but I don’t know anyone who’s a single wage earner, like myself, who take advantage of that program.
Were I to hazard a guess, my guess is that there are people who would like to change jobs, or change careers, who’d exploit a program like that so that they could use it as a safety net while looking at their options. Others, such as those in my financial situation, might use it as a government-funded sabbatical program when considering unpaid leaves of absence. “Work” really does get old after a while.
That’s what’s happening where i live. Housing is so expensive that children have to move away.
the interesting part is that the folks who “can’t afford” housing CAN afford it… just not here. Still, there’s a large tax (often $10,000 or so) on home sales, and the towns use a lot of their tax money, to pay for “affordable” housing.
And why? Land here was cheap 20 years ago. So were rentals. Wages were high.
At that time, there were two classes of people. One class saved their money and bought land. They’re now rich as hell. the other class rented, spent their money on vacations, used their high wages for something else, never wanted to take the risk of home ownership… and now they’re fucked.
this is an example of socialism gone haywire. It’s one thing to help people who are actually poor. But my community helps people who are 1) rich by national standards; and usually 2) HAD the opportunity to avoid being in this situation, and didn’t.
they took the risk.
taxpayers bail them out.
“
They’reTheir results disagree with my position, therefore they must have been unethical in how they ran the experiment.”So are you saying that if you could, you’d stop working altogether, forever, choosing instead to live on a poverty-level income; or are you saying that you’d take a vacation if you could after which you’d return to some sort of waged work?
If you’re saying the former, then yes, your case is unlike the cases discussed in Decnavda’s link. If you’re saying the latter, however, then you’re just like the people in Decnavda’s link; you’d reduce the number of hours you work (by taking a vacation from work, then returning), but you wouldn’t quit working altogether.
Yes, people did use it like that, according to Decnavda’s link. But that’s an entirely positive effect; if people are able to more effectively choose their own jobs, they’re more likely to wind up in a “best fit” job in which they’re more productive.
Again, as long as there aren’t significant numbers of (able to work, pre-retirement-age) people leaving paid work forever, I don’t see why this is a problem.
>Were I to hazard a guess, my guess is that there are people who would like to change jobs, or change careers, who’d exploit a program like that so that they could use it as a safety net while looking at their options.
Many retirement-age folks do exactly the same thing. Some take advantage of their safety net to pursue new careers that don’t offer medical coverage, some work fewer hours or more casually or seasonally, and many seize the opportunity to pursue rigorous schedules of unpaid community work. Oddly, I’ve never heard any consider Social Security a bad idea because those old folks “exploit” it that way.
Kaethe,
Social Security is different from what Ampersand mentioned — there’s an age limit. Those pesky old people have to be at least age 62 before they “exploit” it.
Oh, and it’s currently running out of money because prior generations set the tax rate too low, the benefits too hight, and the age of eligibility didn’t keep pace with life expectancy. This “swipe card” idea doesn’t have an age limit, and I’d hazard a guess that the benefits would be significantly higher than what a wage earner who’s worked the minimum 40 quarters at minimum wage would receive. If 70 years of Social Security benefits have produced the current mess that is Social Security, I don’t see Swipe Cards for the Masses producing anything less financially insolvent.
I was in a seminar a few years ago with a woman who had immigrated to this country from Scotland. When she left Scotland (this isn’t the case any more, by the way) that country was almost fully socialist.
She said, without turning a hair, that where she came from, “there’s no shame in not working, it’s OK, you can just get the dole and live on that if you want to.”
Now as I say, this isn’t true in Scotland any more, and the cold-bloodedness of this woman’s statement is one reason why not. She seemed to think that the money to fund the “dole” fell out of the sky, whereas what was really happening was that the people who were going to work every day were supporting a lot of people who for no good reason just didn’t feel like doing that, who felt like their days would be more enjoyably spent at the pub or at the beach.
As a working person myself, I couldn’t agree more.
Disability, of course, is a very different question. We owe it to ourselves as a society to support the disabled at a decent standard of living. (We aren’t quite doing this currently, by the way.)
But people who’d just rather not work? I think not. Not if I have anything to say about it.
Furrycatherder, Social Security isn’t broke. The claims you’re making are myths; nothing more than some very minor adjustments are required to keep Social Security solvent for the foreseeable future. Since absolutely no government program can be expected to run forever without any adjustments, it makes no more sense to declare SS a broke failure than it does to declare the military or the schools or the national guard broke failures.
Also, let me ask you: Why do you think it’s a bad thing if people who would otherwise be stuck in jobs, are able to afford switching careers? I would think that would be one of the positive features of a negative income tax or a basic income grant program, not a flaw.
Susan, the (discussion of a) study that’s been linked to here seems to show that when given the chance, a poverty-level basic income does not convince people to stop working altogether. Besides, the bugaboo of the person who takes the government check and spends all day at the pub will always be with us; far from being unique to socialist states, it’s a common complaint any time there’s any sort of welfare state (think of Reagan’s Calladac-driving welfare queen). So it’s not true that you can avoid such concerns by avoiding being a socialist state.
One class saved their money and bought land. They’re now rich as hell. the other class rented, spent their money on vacations, used their high wages for something else, never wanted to take the risk of home ownership… and now they’re fucked.
That’s right. The stupid class spent their money on vacations, etc., etc. I’m sure that medical care and other things like that didn’t enter into it at all. Or, perhaps, they analyzed the situation and found a strategy that they thought would work better in the long run than owning property (the current, about to collapse, housing market is an anomaly that falls far outside anything we have ever seen in this country. in 20 years you may call those whose strategy is to invest in real estate stupidly blind. we don’t know for sure where the real estate market will be in 20 or 30 years), and they were wrong. Stupid fuckers. After all, the poor have nobody to blame but themselves.
True enough, Amp, that such abuses take place in non-totally-socialist economies.
The reform of the welfare system some few years ago now convinces me at least (and a lot of other people) that there were a lot of people on welfare who could very well have supported themselves, and who are now doing so. “Poverty level” income without work seems to have convinced them to stop working – or, stop working on the books – and cutting off those funds has convinced them to start working. I believe that this is good for all concerned.
Those who can work should work. (Or, at least find a way to live without me supporting them.) Those who cannot work should be supported at a higher level than is currently the case. This latter group is a far better target for that money, in my opinion.
Susan –
The “dole” is different from an NIT or BIG precisely because you have to leave work to go on it. I noted above that the studies showed that work disincentives rose and fell with the take back rate. Welfare-state means tested programs have, in effect, a 100% take back rate or income tax. That is what causes the problems you saw from your Scottish acquaintance. As an attorney who represents welfare claimants, one of my tasks is to advise my clients how to spend down any windfalls they recieve so that they can stay on benefits. In other words, as an advocate for the poor, I have to advise the poor how to stay poor. That is INSANE. An NIT or BIG is completely different.
The current flaw in my basic income advocacy is that I need to find similar studies quantifying the work disincentive effects of various types of welfare programs.
Decnavda,
Certainly a 100% effective tax is a disincentive to work!! You’d have to be a moron to work under those circumstances.
Another disincentive you don’t mention is that if you make too much money in the US you will loose free medical coverage for your children, without, however, making enough money to replace it with private insurance, which is all but unobtainable anyhow.
This comment however gets us into the American health care “system”, a discussion which is perhaps pretty far afield from the original topic of this thread. It’s too early in the day for me to start ranting and raving anyhow.
Amp writes:
I didn’t claim Social Security is “broke”. It has made promises it cannot keep, that’s an entirely different problem than “broke”. “Broke” is “has no money”. What Social Security has is an income stream that in my lifetime will only be able to deliver 70 percent or so of the promised benefits.
Can if be fixed? Sure. Everything can be “fixed”, if “fixed” is unconstrained, but Social Security cannot be “fixed” within the constraints of what is politically viable. So long as life expectancies continue to rise and birthrates fall, Social Security will be in a death spiral. The raised the elligibility age to 67, but adjusting for the increase in life expectancy, the eligibility age has declined, not gone up, and the number of workers supporting Social Security recipients has plummeted. It’s just facts, Amp — don’t take them personally.
The problem with Social Security is what Susan described — people don’t understand that programs such as Social Security get their money from somewhere other than the giant money tree.
It’s not an accident that those pesky Conservatives are the ones who want to bail out of Social Security. So far as I know, my projected benefit (ha!) is the maximum benefit Social Security will pay — I’ve been at the limit for the past 40 quarters, and as I understand such things, that means I get the maximum. If I could opt completely out of Social Security, even if my employer had to keep putting their 6.2% in, I’d do so in a heartbeat. With 22 more years to go until “retirement” (ha!), I’d probably still be able to get more from what I could save in the meantime than what Social Security will pay me when my time (may or may not …) comes.
I think that people who want to take time off from work should save for it, and not expect someone else to pay for it.
Personally, I’d love to take a few years off. But I don’t think it’s your responsibility for my decision to take some time off. I think it’s my responsibility.
Now, if you can’t work because you’re disabled through no fault of your own, I have no problem supporting you in a dignified manner.
I’m not sure people are seeing the costs and the benefits.
[W]hen given the chance, a poverty-level basic income does not convince people to stop working altogether.
To be clear: Do people work less if they receive some level of income independent of their work? YES (on average). Every one of the studies demonstrated this dynamic, just as every one of the scientists expected that it would. Studies were designed to measure the size of this dynamic (a 13% reduction on average), but no one doubted that some reduction would result. Like it or lump it, we need to reconcile ourselves to this basic fact.
Now, what do people do with their hours if they’re not working all the time? Dunno. But apparently they found ways to be productive without receiving a salary:
I think that people who want to take time off from work should save for it, and not expect someone else to pay for it.
Personally, I’d love to take a few years off. But I don’t think it’s your responsibility for my decision to take some time off. I think it’s my responsibility.
And that’s a fine statement of philosophy. But if kids are born with low birthweights, have crappy nutrition, poor parental supervision, don’t get educated, and grow up with domestic violence and eventually divorce, do you really think you will be insulated from the consequences? Do you really think you derive more benefit if a parent spends an extra hour at a minimum-wage job then if that parent spent an extra hour nurturing the next generation? If a parent prefers to accept a taxpayer-provided subsidy to stay home with the kids, it is not at all clear to me that taxpayers are made worse off; I rather expect the contrary.
If you are concerned about keeping Social Security solvent, make sure the next generation is healthy and educated. We may or may not be “responsible” for the next generation, but we sure are held hostage by them.
Indeed. Social Security, despite this fiction about “accounts,” is actually a giant Ponzi scheme whereby current workers support current retirees. You haven’t “saved up” for your retirement via Social Security. You supported the old people who were retired while you worked, on the expectation that young workers would support you in turn.
Now, there’s nothing at all wrong with this in theory. The problem is, the math doesn’t work out, for a couple of reasons. First, the federal government has “borrowed” nearly all of what Social Security had set aside, so the day of reckoning is coming much faster than you think. Second, as Furry points out, life expectancies have risen while birth rates have fallen, catching this whole idea in a crunch from both sides. There’s trouble coming for my generation, and even more for yours. Ampersand, if you really do have the answer for all this, there’s a very well-paid job and a lot of glory waiting for you in DC.
Of course, as you recognize Furry, we can’t let you do that, because we need that money to support people who are currently retired or who will soon retire.
As for the other topic, it’s not a bad thing to take time off before retirement, it’s a good thing. I’d like to do it myself. But if you want to take time off, please to pay for it yourself, because I don’t want to.
Disability is different, as everyone acknowledges.
nobody.really writes:
I’d like to incent them to not have children. That would be my preference.
In particular, I’d like to offer parents on welfare of any sort (my older brother, who has been on some form of “public assistance” most of his adult life doesn’t like it when I call it “welfare” either) the opportunity to be sterilized and receive a larger welfare handout, or not be sterilized and receive less for each additional child.
On Social Security finance:
If I could opt completely out of Social Security, even if my employer had to keep putting their 6.2% in, I’d do so in a heartbeat.
With 22 more years to go until “retirement” (ha!), I’d probably still be able to get more from what I could save in the meantime than what Social Security will pay me when my time (may or may not …) comes.
The libertarian fantasy: to avoid paying taxes yet continue to receive the benefit of law, order and government services. Yes, FICA taxes are nominally dedicated to paying for Social Security benefits. But, as noted above, they really pay for government services generally. In this sense, FICA is no different than the federal income tax – except that it’s more regressive.
Now, if you can’t work because you’re disabled through no fault of your own, I have no problem supporting you in a dignified manner.
Great. FICA taxes support Social Security disability insurance – the primary program designed to subsidized the disabled.
[L]ife expectancies have risen while birth rates have fallen, catching [Social Security funding] in a crunch from both sides.
The Social Security fund depends upon the number of workers and the salary of those workers, but not the birth rate. Of course, if the US doesn’t breed enough workers, we’ll have to import them. As with so many aspects of the US economy, outsourcing may be the most efficient way to get what we want, whether it be clothes or people.
Right now the fund benefits from the large number of undocumented workers, and their employers, who are paying FICA taxes even though the employee will never be eligible to receive Social Security benefits.
Another part of my job is representing disability claimants. Now, you probably know people who have back pain or depression but are still functional, and can hold a job. You might also know people with back pain or depression who can not get out of bed: these people are more disabled the average person who is blind or in a wheelchair. Okay, so a person with moderate to severe back pain and moderate to severer depression applies for disability. What should we do? Congradulations – you just created work for me. Do *YOU* know how much pain they are in? Do *YOU* know how much effort it takes them to work? How do we even decide who is disabled? The deaf are automatically considered disabled, but really, can’t most deaf people hold down jobs? And actually, can’t MOST disabled people hold down SOME job, as long as they try REALLY hard? And if a person can not hold a job because he keeps getting fired because he has Narcissistic Personality Disorder, is he really disabled, or would giving him benefits just be rewarding him for being a jerk?
You want there to be can’t work / won’t work distinction, but there isn’t. The grey area here is at least as big as the category of disability itself. And the distinction creates perverse incentives – again, effort is punished because if it is sucessful it proves the impaired person is not disabled. So society pays disabled people to prove to us that they are helpless.
Compassion? I’m not convinced.
nobody.really writes:
Social Security is the most progressive tax going.
If you look at dollars of benefits versus dollars of cost, the less one makes, the more (as a ration) one receives. It looks regressive because you’re looking at it as if it were a tax and not an entitlement program.
As for paying for government services, no, FICA doesn’t. Sorry — the money that goes in is then borrowed, which reduces the cost of borrowing, but doesn’t pay for anything. The borrowed money earns interest, the same as every other government obligation. This reduces both the cost of running the government and the cost of running Social Security, as compared to the money just sitting under someones mattress.
That’s a nice fantasy, but federal income tax and FICA records are matched against tax returns and the Social Security rolls. In order for an employer to pay taxes on an undocumented worker and get away with it, they’d have to have the correct name, age and gender, the person would have to be alive, and the person who is alive would have to then file a federal tax return recognizing the income. All W-2’s, 1099’s and 1040’s are cross-referenced. If they don’t match up, the IRS sends out a nice letter (I have at least one — I speak from experience!) telling you that your return is wrong, please kindly refile and/or pay up. Additionally, the SSA cross-references FICA payments against it’s records by name, age, sex and being alive.
If you’ve got some way for what you describe to be true I’d love to hear it. I’m sure the Feds would as well.
When I worked at the IRS (about 15 years ago), we gave out personal taxpayer identification numbers that could be used by people who did not have a SSN. No information collected was shared with the (then) INS. The IRS is run by accountants who do what they can to get as much money as they can. I don’t know if more recent legislation more focused on hating immigrants than collecting revenue has changed that.
I’ve yet to read a libertarian complain that taxes go to things that clearly support law and order. The first seems to be about government services.
Happy to oblige, although I suspect the Feds have some acquaintance with the issue, given that Social Security’s chief actuary has been discussing the issue for years.
But that’s precisely the point: Once you acknowledge that borrowing from the Social Security Trust Fund “reduces … the cost of running the government,” you acknowledge that the fund is providing an additional benefit above and beyond your retirement benefit. So you can’t make the argument that the returns on your FICA taxes are less than you’d get from other investments until you account for the other benefits that Social Security provides and other investments don’t.
To truly compare the “returns” on your FICA investment, you’d have to compare –
1) the cost of obtaining the retirement benefits, disability benefits, survivor benefits, etc., comparable to Social Security’s, backed by the full faith and credit of the US, plus
2) the cost of the additional tax revenues government would need to collect to defray government’s added borrowing costs, now that government no longer has the opportunity to borrow (cheaply) from the Social Security Trust Fund, plus
3) the cost of living in a society without a social safety net.
Is Social Security worth the cost of FICA taxes? Dunno, but it’s by no means a simple analysis.
nobody.really writes:
(First, thanks for the article. It leaves me with more questions than answers …)
Yes, I know what has to be calculated, and the costs are still less to do it privately.
Social Security is a wealth transfer program. It makes great sense for the lower income brackets and no sense at all for the upper ones.
Part of what makes it a bad deal for just about anyone over middle class is that what it provides isn’t realistically even poverty level, and if the person is above middle class, the amount of replacement income required so greatly exceeds Social Security that they’d have to privately provide for their own disability coverage anyway. The current $2,116 (I think I copied that right) maximum benefit is 26% of the maximum taxable amount ($97,500), whereas the minimum, which is about $800, is 90% of minimum wage. In short, on top of what the middle class pays in taxes, it has to save still more just to cover what Social Security is supposedly covering.
The other part that makes it such a horrible deal is that the amount of taxes paid — including the match — saved and compounded over time, even with a sizable fraction taken out for life and disability insurance — is just this huge amount of money. It’s into the millions of dollars, and that’s with modest salaries in the early years. Investment income alone on a $1M pot of money, at 8% ROI is $80k. How is a $48K annual benefit supposed to be worth all the money and the foregone investment returns on it?
It’s a retirement program for the poor — for everyone else it’s just an annoying tax.
nobody.really Writes:
March 15th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
I think that people who want to take time off from work should save for it, and not expect someone else to pay for it.
Personally, I’d love to take a few years off. But I don’t think it’s your responsibility for my decision to take some time off. I think it’s my responsibility.
And that’s a fine statement of philosophy. But if kids are born with low birthweights, have crappy nutrition, poor parental supervision, don’t get educated, and grow up with domestic violence and eventually divorce, do you really think you will be insulated from the consequences? Do you really think you derive more benefit if a parent spends an extra hour at a minimum-wage job then if that parent spent an extra hour nurturing the next generation? If a parent prefers to accept a taxpayer-provided subsidy to stay home with the kids, it is not at all clear to me that taxpayers are made worse off; I rather expect the contrary.
This is a bizarre collection of thoughts. Are you suggesting that bad parenting is going to be solved by having poor parents work less and stay home more? I think it would be just the opposite. The best lesson a parent can give a child is the value of work. I don’t think that parents who are predisposed to poorly treat their children will have a better effect on their kids by being around them more.
I always wonder how people can have such differing perspectives regarding social welfare. Admittedly I have lived an unusual life. But I can’t believe people can be so nieve when it comes to human behavior.
When I was in my teenage years I left home. After working some menial jobs I managed to start a small furniture business which grew into a string of stores. Being a kid and having little money I had to start out in the poorest most crime ridden sections of Boston. I was not unfamiliar as I I lived in these same neighborhoods as a small child.
I had to become very familiar with my customer base in relation to their wants and needs. Eventually I employed several of these people in various capacities. But there was a very large percentage of folks who had no interest at all in working. These were the welfare queens and princesses which I constantly hear people claiming are a myth.
One of the most common situations would involve a young girl coming in with her mother to purchase furniture for a new apartment. At first I was a bit miffed at the regularity of the pregnant teens kids would walk through my doors. But eventually that shock began to wear off as I learned how many of these people saw welfare as a way of life. Despite the fact that these stores were very profitable I knew I could not do this for much longer. It hit an all time low when a couple of women came in with their very young daughters to do some shopping. The kids were no more than 13 or 14 and rail thin. It wasn’t unusual to hear a mother explain that her child would be moving out when her child was born. but this case was different. The kids were not even pregnant yet!
But this kind of abuse is not restricted to the poor. When my parents moved us out of the city and into a wealthy suburb I was exposed to many wealthy families. One of my friends had a mild case of asthma. Because of this his parents would let him out of doing any kind of chores. They would pay me to mow their lawn. Eventually the kid quit school and hung around the house until the parents told him he had to get a job. He worked all of 2 days. I kid you not. His uncle got him a job laying down terrazzo floors. This is very demanding work and he hated it. That was the last time he has ever worked.
This kid was very intelligent and knew how to manipulate people. He told me he would rather live a minimal lifestyle and not work. He enjoyed playing records, smoking pot, and fishing. So he set out to find a way to achieve his goal of not having to work. After studying the issue he came to me all excited about his plan. He would go to a psychologist and convince him that he had a phobia which prevented him from working. He had found it in a book and studied up on all the symptoms. He was 19 then and has never worked another day in his life. He is 47 years old now. Imagine that!
But he is not the only case. There are many more people than some are willing to admit. There are also the enablers to go along with them. One such person is a fellow who has not worked in over 20 years. He lives with his elderly father and spends most of his day watching television and eating. He finds this completely satisfactory and has no plan on changing until his father passes away. The one conundrum he had was the lack of health insurance. Heading toward fifty and being quite unhealthy he worried that his lifestyle might be interrupted as his brother and sister wanted to make sure he didn’t squander his fathers money in such a way that they would have less money when the man died. Just in time Massachusetts unveiled its health care pan which would require that every resident be insured. Of course he qualified for a complete subsidy which gives him full care with no deductible. He even gets free dental. In the past week he has taken full advantage with a long list of medical procedures and with more to come. He is even trying to con his way to an expensive new procedure witch would improve his vision without having to wear glasses.
I can’t be the only one exposed to such egregious examples of abuse. Are people so nieve to these things? Don’t think Welfare reform has ended these abuses either. Recently one woman was arrested for skimming the welfare system for over 100 grand by claiming to be several different people. Her penalty? She remains on welfare and is required to pay back 100 dollars per month. It is impossible for her to ever pay back the debt in that manner. But she was aided by a system which has no real desire to curtail such abuse.
http://www.cnhins.com/talkers/cnhinstalkers_story_060045639.html
I always love reading stories about professional welfare recipients.
I have friends all up and down the financial spectrum, from the extremely poor to the snotty rich.
What welfare has done is create a class of people, and their supporters, who are out of touch with reality. One woman I know, who raised most of her children on welfare, and several of whom’s children are now raising theirs on welfare, doesn’t understand why I don’t get food stamps. She knows approximately how much I make, she just thinks that everyone gets welfare. There’s nothing wrong with welfare, in her mind, and she has no incentive to get off welfare, because why bother? It’s money she gets, just like a salary. She could make about twice what she makes, and I’ve told her of places that are hiring that would pay her that much, but she’d rather work someplace close to home that’s “fun” to work at. So, she has “fun” and I pay taxes.
Over the years I’ve learned a lot about the welfare economy. I’ve watched people buy and sell food stamps, and now the food stamp debit cards we have here, because they want a few extra dollars to play the lottery or buy beer or buy some clothes or whatever. I’ve watched people buy and sell stolen food of all sorts so they can buy a food stamp card (this makes no sense — my guess it’s all about what can be stolen and how much it’s worth) when they’ve run out of food stamps. I know people who think nothing of not paying their electric bill or rent or any other bill and then wait to be evicted, then find another place and start all over again. I know women who’ve run out of money after buying all manner of things, or losing it gambling, and then turned a few tricks to make up for what they didn’t have. I have friends who pawn and unpawn (don’t know the word for “unpawning”) the same piece of jewelry every couple of months when they need money to pay the cable TV or cell phone bill.
Outside of the world of welfare, I don’t see these things happening. I know that correlation isn’t causation, but I see so much entitlement mentality that I have to believe they feel entitled to break whatever social rules they feel like breaking primarily because they aren’t working 40 or 50 or 60 hours a week for all the stuff that’s moving through their life. If they are working they are intentionally under employed.
If you ask most lefties what the “rich” pay in taxes, the answer is probably “too little”. Last year I paid about 40% of my gross pay in taxes. I pay less than many because I’m incredibly cheap — my house is small for my income level, so my property taxes are low, and I save huge amounts, so I’m not paying sales tax on that money. Years ago when I was less tight with a dollar I paid about 55%. That’s what the “rich” pay in taxes.
FCH and Michael, do either of you understand the concept of “sample size” and legitimate data-gathering versus anecdotes?
Yes, some people cheat the system. Any system.
No, what you’re describing does not appear to be the norm. If I’m mistaken about that, then help me out by linking to data from a legitimate source showing that the sort of cases you’re discussing here are the norm.
And no number of mostly entirely undocumented, and entirely biased, anecdotes is going to substitute for the total lack of evidence in your arguments.
Nobody.Really wrote:
FCH responded:
Nobody.Really responded with a link to a New York Times article about the billions of dollars illegal immigrants in effect donate to the Fed each year.
FCH responded:
Actually, it answered the primary question in the disagreement between N.R. and yourself, FCH; NR was completely correct, and you were completely wrong. There is no legitimate doubt left regarding this question. I think you could have done more to acknowlege that. I’m not asking for a mea culpa, but a “point well taken, I was mistaken about that claim” would have been nice.
Furrycatherder, there’s no either/or choice between “people save up for enough money to switch careers without assistance” and “people don’t save at all and just rely on the dole.” If assistance is available in small quantities, plenty of career-switchers will use a combination, not one or the other.
But in the real world — as opposed to libertarian fantasy land — there will be more people who are able to switch careers, if career-switching is in effect subsidized, then there will be if no subsidization at all exists.
And it seems self-evident that more people being able to switch careers is good. First of all, many people will opt to switch into careers in which they will be more productive in some way — which will be good for the economy as a whole. Second of all, people will be happier, which is an intrinsic good. Third, employers will have increased motivation to make sure that their working conditions aren’t making employees needlessly miserable.
Why — other than your personal preference that none of our mutual tax dollars be used to subsidize any non-disabled person’s life — is this a bad thing?
[Edited to clarify my language.]
You don’t know anyone not on welfare who sometimes runs up a credit card balance? Really?
You do understand that the equivalent of pawning and redeeming (that’s the term you’re looking for) for people with credit is simply to run up a credit balance temporarily, right? People without good credit have to put up a surety when they borrow money, people with good credit can just put it on their card.
But dealing with pawn shops is something the underclass does, so it must be a sign of their wrongness…
Ampersand writes:
Who is going to pay for this?
I’m saving for my retirement, various and sundry rainy days, and a child to go to college. There’s no more money, go bother someone else.
Ampersand writes:
In terms of the SSA just keeping the money, yes, nobody.really was correct. Why the federal government isn’t doing more to the businesses which collect these taxes from non-citizens is a mystery. Why the federal government doesn’t provide an instant SS ID verification program is another one.
The rest of my comments were correct and borne out by the article — the Federal government does match the information and does send out “no match” letters. I’d hardly call my post “completely incorrect”.
I’m about 245 miles from the border. It wouldn’t hurt my feelings in the least if the border were sealed shut. It would improve jobs, wages, standard of living, and reduce crime and overcrowding.
Well … yeah. More to the point, that’s what the lengthy quote at Post 169 suggests, quoting the years of research on this very question. To summarize, give households some minimum level of income and they reduce the number of hours they work by 13%, on average, but they also –
– increase school attendance, grades, and standardized test scores for their kids, and reduced the drop-out rate,
– increased the number of adults getting education,
– reduced the incidence of low-birthweight babies and malnutrition,
– bought and retained more homes,
– experienced less domestic violence and fewer divorces (although one study in British Columbia revealed an increase in divorce – go figure).
I don’t doubt people’s sincerity in reporting their experience with people on welfare behaving inappropriately. Similarly, I don’t doubt a police officer’s sincerity in arguing that Hmongs are prone to crime; if the only time you ever meet a Hmong person is at work, and your job is apprehending criminals, of COURSE you will generalize from your experiences. That’s only natural. It’s called “selection bias.”
But what are the odds that your life exposes you to a representative sample of people?
So, Michael thinks that young people on welfare should not be forming couples, having babies, and setting up households. Perhaps he’s right. But what portion of young people on welfare who invest their money prudently and refrain from getting pregnant will come into a new furniture store? If you start from the perspective that people on welfare shouldn’t be wasting their limited resources on new furniture, then OF COURSE the only welfare people Michael sees will be people who are behaving badly. This is classic selection bias.
In contrast, if people on welfare caused their kids to do better in school, how would Michael observe that fact? If they got more continuing education, how would Michael observe that fact? If they had fewer low-birthweight kids, how would Michael observe that fact? Etc. Is Michael really in a position of evaluate all the costs and benefits of a social welfare program?
I don’t mean to pick on Michael. The ideas he’s expressing pose a real problem for any social program in a democracy: People who behave “appropriately” tend to be inconspicuous. People who behave “inappropriately” tend to be conspicuous by virtue of their inappropriate behavior. Some people imagine that all homosexuals wear leather thongs and feathers and march in parades, because those are the only people they notice who identify as gay. The gay accountant, secretary, student and appliance salesman sitting next to them on the bus don’t attract much attention, even if they are much more representative.
People who understand selection bias can manipulate the public’s distorted perception for political gain. The authors of the studies on providing basic incomes acknoweldge this problem, but offer no solutions. It seems intractable.
What Furry said. Me too.
As a CLASS? I doubt it. Are you implying that the selectino of things was done purely on the basis of medical care? Or are you changing the subject?
more accurately: “prioritize short term gains at the cost of long term security.”
Of course, their strategy sucked.
Yup, we may. I’m OK with that. What, you think I want you to bail me out if my home depreciates?
The “poor” thing would apply in some cases. But in my area, a lot of the millionares were carpenters, landscapers, etc. It really was possible to do.
N.R,
The problem is that a statistic like a 13% reduction in hours worked isn’t one that many of us, especially those of us who’ve worked what amounts to our entire lives (okay, I could have started working at age 11. Oh, wait — I was raking leaves and mowing lawns at age 11 …), are going to like.
Nor are any of the other “improvements” something I consider to require a welfare program. People need to learn to live within that means, and that includes learning that having children is an expensive proposition. It goes without saying that preventing a child from being born into a welfare situation is cheaper than raising that child within the welfare system. And yet creating realistic incentives to not have children, and the means to accomplish that, is completely off the table. The net result is what has been observed on a global scale — the highest rates of reproduction are in the lowest socio-economic classes. The people paying for that are the ones who pay taxes, and while the upper quartile starts at $60K, I’d hardly think of $60K as “rich” —
(source)
As I wrote above, I already pay more than enough, please go bother someone else.
The 1996 changes in welfare laws settled for once and for all the greatest debate between “welfare liberals” and “welfare conservatives” — do liberalized welfare programs foster welfare dependence and create a disincentive to work? The answer, from study after study, is “Yes, liberalized welfare programs create disincentives to work”, and the studies you and others referenced further bear that out.
Entitlement programs are a form of double taxation — first, we pay the taxes so that other people get the benefits, then we have to save so that we can pay for ourselves to get the benefits. Programs like NIT and BIG would leave me in poverty were I to take advantage of something like them. Sure, it would be nice to have a few hundred extra dollars, but I’d still be dipping into personal savings to pay basic living expenses — housing, utilities, food, clothing, transportation.
There reaches a point where taxation becomes absurd on its face, and for me it was when the total taxes I pay exceeded the median income. Yes, I’m happy to be well-paid, and I’m even happy to contribute to the government. But in 1994 or 1995 (forget the exact year — it was one of those two) when I paid $0.55 of every dollar I earned in “tax”, it was just dumb.
If you look at the link I provided above, you’ll see who’s paying the bill for these programs, and it isn’t the poor middle class the way lefties like to mewl about. The bottom 3 quartiles pay 15% of the total (total!) federal tax burden.
A perfectly fair question. Indeed, a crucial question. And to answer it, we need to ask the implied corollary question:
Who is going to pay for this if we don’t?
If we don’t provide a basic income to people, and they have poor nutrition and low birthweight kids that require a fortune in perinatal care, who is going to pay for that?
If we don’t provide a basic income to people, and their kids don’t get an education and instead grow up with violence, abuse and divorce, who is going to pay for that?
If we don’t provide a basic education, so adults pursue less continuing education and find themselves less able to switch to more productive jobs, who is going to pay for that?
We all do – in health care costs; in crime, crime prevention and prisons; in foregone tax collections; in lost productivity; in social misery.
Does this offend me, my sense of autonomy and property rights? Of course. Does it bother me that my taxes are higher to pay for people’s stupid decisions? Hell yes. And even if I’m gonna pay the taxes, does it bother me that government has fewer resources to provide relief to truly innocent victims, because we’re spending money on people who are simply stupid or lazy? You’re goddam right it does.
And then I take a deep breath. No, it’s not the ideal system. But we never get to choose between all good and all bad; we choose between better and worse. If we forbid emergency rooms from turning indigent people away, it is entirely foreseeable that some indigent people will use emergency rooms inappropriately. That’s simply an unavoidably cost of the mandate. Having reconciled myself to that cost, I am freed up to acknowledge that subsidizing regular health care for indigent people might be a cheaper way to go.
Who is going to pay for that? We all will. But we’re going to pay for it anyway, one way or another. Let’s just pay for it rationally.