Will Wilkinson - Latest Comments in Postmaterialism and Cohen’s Maxim

Re: Postmaterialism and Cohen’s Maxim

dalot — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 13:37:54 -0000

I wish to wish all pregnant women of good mood, easy pregnancy and natural sorts!
Good luck also are happy! Give birth easily and independently! Let not doctors give birth for you, and you! Also adjust itself on chest feeding of the kid! Read the necessary information!
Be, lovely pregnant mums and expecting posterities of the daddy, are healthy and wise!

Re: Postmaterialism and Cohen’s Maxim

stuart — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 00:09:01 -0000

Theres no evidence for this claim whatsoever. Australia has workplace participation rates mirroring that of the USA and an unemployment rate that is lower. The dole has fairly stringent conditions in terms of applying for a minimum ammount of jobs per weeks and has cancellations of payments for failure to take jobs or if they leave jobs for no good reasons. The 'Baby Bonus' is ill conceived, but has had little impact on the birth rate which has only increased nominally.

Re: Postmaterialism and Cohen’s Maxim

Palinpal — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 12:57:35 -0000

I wonder, as well, what the shifting demographic will render over the next few decades: immigrant populations, such as the Hispanic population, are much more family-centric: more apt to squeeze space for grandma to come live with you, rather than make her face economic hardship due to a fixed income and little or no pension.

There's no way to enforce a "care for your own family members" value, even in the leftist illuminati force-certain-generous-behavior world, but it would be a better country if individualism was left by the wayside.

Re: Postmaterialism and Cohen’s Maxim

rawdawgbuffalo — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 11:03:51 -0000

just lets me know folks need to be concerned about the pres. elect safety/a>

Re: Postmaterialism and Cohen’s Maxim

mll — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 02:42:36 -0000

I think that there are a few other reasons, other than the BOUNDARY problem and the lack of funding, that I think the Benefits for All, Social Insurance approach is better.

1) Community: Social Insurance leads to a "We are all in this together", i.e. considering a plan for US rather than for THEM. A Welfare plan, on the other hand, divides the community into the Richer, and the Poorer, e.g. The Givers and the Takers, thus leading to more polarization of the society.

2) Empathy: Social Insurance leads to "empathy" relative to the plan. If it applies to all, then all will "feel" how it effects them and thus plan it to work right for them. On the other hand if it only applies to some, then the "richers" can only guess how it would apply to the "poorer" and thus even if the "richer" wanted to design a good plan, since it does not apply to them, they are designing it for others intellectually rather than considering how it would apply to them.

3) Simplicity: a universal plan, perhaps with some augmentation for the richer to add on, probably is easier, e.g. less expensive to manage, where as a welfare plan requires continuing monitoring as to how is eligible and who is not. For example, with Medicare, one walks into the Doctor, and there is only one system, where as with individual systems each time one needs treatment the Doctor must check with a different system, see if I am NOW covered, etc.

Re: Postmaterialism and Cohen’s Maxim

DWAnderson — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 19:30:33 -0000

Hmm... "Provide government assistance to people who fall beneath a certain minimum of resources. Otherwise, don’t." That seems like a worthy goal, but the devil is in the details. The crux of the problem is that you if you suddenly cut off benefits at a certain level of income there will be strong incentives not to work around the point where that work would result in a loss of benefits. Alternatively you can phase out benefits which ends up giving benefits out to the not-so-needy. For that reason I suspect that benefit phaseouts also result in more intrusive regulation of the beneficiaries-- in part to make granting such benefits politically paletable. So it's really not as simple as just giving benefits to the needy.

As a fellow incrementalist, however, none of this is to say we can't do better than we do today with respect to bestowing benefits on fewer of the non-needy.

Re: Postmaterialism and Cohen’s Maxim

mobile — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:34:44 -0000

The second reason to prefer the social insurance scheme is good-old-fashioned moral hazard. People at the margin of other means-tested programs (welfare, subsidized housing, financial aid at private colleges for upper-middle-class kids) will do all sorts of socially non-optimal things to hide income or avoid generating any income.

Re: Postmaterialism and Cohen’s Maxim

joel — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:10:58 -0000

Moral hazard is a serious problem in Australia, with our generous social welfare program for the unemployed. There is a vast underclass forming due to the "dole", public funded child support, and the ill-advised lump-sum "baby bonus" that promotes reproduction among lower socioeconomic brackets, coupled with insufficient incentive to become a self-sufficient worker.