Interesting Links for 05-04-2014

[andrewducker]

• What are jobs for?
  (tags: economics employment politics work )
• How spending on day-to-day public services will have been cut by 37% by 2018-19
  (tags: government uk economy )
• Towards a sensible welfare system
  (tags: welfare uk politics )
• $1,000-a-day miracle drug shocks U.S. health care system
  (tags: drugs healthcare usa )
• I found something I agree

Comments

[del_c]

The welfare article got a comment from one David Rolle, who seems to be one of the "scarce resources" and "affordable welfare" advocates. He wants means testing for everything. He writes: "the state should assist only those who need help". But that requires the state to know exactly who needs help, and extra guard labour to keep out those who don't need help but wish to claim they do. All intrusive, anti-liberty (not that I'm a liberal but he presumably is) and already known to be a failed approach, for over a century now.

Meanwhile, we already have an apparatus devoted to determining, much more efficiently, who can afford to pay taxes. The sensible welfare system would give prescriptions, bus passes, TV and fuel (I use his examples) to people who are warm and breathing, and let progressive taxation sort out the millionaires. I do not begrudge Richard Branson or J K Rowling their bus pass.

I grant "were you born before this date?" might be a sorting test sufficiently cheap to be worth implementing, so that old people get fuel and young people get told to buy their own. Otherwise forget welfare testing: it combines evil and uselessness in one sucky package.

[apostle_of_eris]

One of the frequent characteristics of the ideological right is unawareness of alternating between rational and moralistic.
"The undeserving poor" is a moral judgement, much more political than economic. Calculating cost-benefit ratios and the like go on and off the table like an above average magic act.
I have said for years that if I could pick a select half of the "working" population to just stay home and be mailed the checks they're already getting, the economy would be better off. Starting with most of the people who ask you for "ID".

[andrewducker]

I agree in some respects - I'm a massive fan of the idea of a Basic Income.

But that seems politically non-viable at the moment - and we are (unless they completely cock it up) about to have a system that affects about 30% of the population that does keep track of how much they have coming in, allowing them to assign money to people reasonably easily.

Small, incremental, improvements, like brining Council Tax Support into this, and improving housing benefit payments, seem like much more sensible suggestions than "Stop checking how much money people earn." - at least in the immediate term.

If you think that we can get a majority to go for Basic Income then I'm all for it though...