Do Corporations 'Believe'?Follow

A limit, but not a constant limit. Assuming you agree that there's more total "stuff" being purchased in our economy today versus say 100 years ago, that is. Of course, if you do place caps on things because you assume a zero sum game, you'll actually ****** economic growth over time and it will kinda become zero sum (ish).




How about we make it a C- (or whatever the minimum "passing grade" is)? That would work. My analogy was just to get you to acknowledge the broad concept that handing people any degree of success without effort will reduce the amount of actual effort they'll expend. I started with an extreme example, but it works all the way to the point of "good enough" (so subsistence in this case). Point being that you will affect the statistical rate at which people will choose to expend effort to obtain something if you grant them that something without effort. How much so is kinda directly related to how "free" the thing you're granting them is. In the case of "everyone gets an A", it's a good bet that zero percent will expend any effort. The lower the free grade, the higher the percentage of people who'll expend effort, right?

Which is a pretty strong argument that increasing the amount of these entitlements is counterproductive and reducing them is beneficial. Assuming we want people to expend effort and become successful on their own to as great a degree as possible, that is. Now, if the objective is to create a class of people dependent on the government so you can use this to political advantage, then you want to set that level of "free stuff" as high as possible. Which objective do you think the Democrats have?

Edited, Apr 2nd 2014 6:54pm by gbaji

Usually anything lower than a C- does not grant you credit for the class. Letter associations aside, a D isn't good enough usually.

Again though, it doesn't matter what labels we apply here. The concept is legitimate. The higher the bar of "free stuff" you give to people, the less effort they will tend to expend improving their own lives. So "more benefits" is bad in the long run for the people who receive them.

Which is what I've been trying to explain to people for years.

Well, you've managed to convince me that people given the bare minimum will work to do better so I guess you convinced me not to sweat the effect of social safety nets.

Congratulations?

So would you agree that there is no problem making sure everybody has the bare minimum to survive? A roof over their heads, clean water, and food to survive. Not a fun life to be sure, but you know that if the bottom ever falls out on you, you aren't going to die. And yet people seem to rally against this, like wanting to cut food stamps, or objecting to things like section 8 housing. The subtle hints I get regarding the generalized conservative view is that if you don't work, they would rather you die instead of spending a dime on you.

Toss it on the pile.

You can't just choose to coast. A perfectly healthy individual may be able to collect unemployment for a time and is he/she is supporting family members, particularly kids, he/she can get food stamps and possibly TANF benefits, but as TANF states, it's temporary.

I feel like people forget that you have to have need to collect from safety net programs.

Not only do 'most' people want to earn a decent living, they don't want to have to trade up their health or their livelihood just to collect 'free stuff' from the government.




Edited, Apr 3rd 2014 3:55pm by Elinda

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They keep her wages low so she has to shop at Family Dollar. Like an informal company store.

"Dinner time, kids! Crystal Pepsi and off-brand lunch meat one day from expiration!"

Don't forget that if one ideologically aligned group disagrees with the data, it counts as "largely debunked".

Vastly overpriced for a dollar store. Learn to coupon people. With that kind of financial know how it's no mystery why they were on food stamps.

20 Quart Tubs of Assorted Animal Parts, now with 13% less rat ***** and human.