Free universal X?

Ideally, taxes are like any other payment, you get more out of it.

^ Realistically, that never happens. Pay 18000 dollars in taxes one year for one person and then you find the local government services are shoddily run, poorly staffed, incompetent and lazy. (Made worse by the fact many more people did the same and paid into that system) That happens more often than you think.

Sure you're realistically assessing the benefits you get, and not just blanket declaring conditions?

You mean like the benefits such as poor quality schools, crumbling roads and a legal system that takes months just to resolve simple traffic tickets? I see that happen all the time in Colorado and we have more money available today owing to the TABOR suspension 7 years ago than we did before. Yet quality in all those areas has declined since the money was freed up. Our schools are worse, our roads are in horrible condition (and dependent on federal aid to get done in the first place), and our legal system grows more messed up by the day.

Err... that's not how taxes work. :)

Besides, if the government services are poorly run, force improvement. If you never try to improve and always try to axe, nothing will ever get any better.

Sounds like standard griping to me, not a realistic assessment.

^^ The TABOR suspension was intended to free more money to improve services in the first place.

That failed and everything got worse. It's time for a different methodology than throw more money at a failing problem and hope it improves. I'm all for improvement, but all proposals for improving anything all boil down to throw more money at it without accountability. It'd be better to just axe the thing entirely and possibly down the road give it another chance from scratch.

You know in Estonia, you can pay parking tickets through your mobile phone?

You're all for fixing things, unless it is government, in which case you want to axe it. You're not formulating much of an argument because as far as I can tell you think it sucks because it is public and refuse to improve upon it in any way and merely try to find ways to cut off its money supply. What do you think the rational response is to that? It's try to grab as much tax money from you as possible before you succeed in axing stuff.

On the other hand, if you started describing why specifically you believe something failed then we can talk more and try to find solutions.

For instance, when I mention social housing what's your first response? OH GADS THE SOCIALISM TAKING MONEY FROM OTHER PEOPLE!

Here's my response, the American projects failed due to the following reasons:

• Closely packing poor individuals with one another thereby causing acute poverty in a single neighbourhood, this leads to the local services deteriorating from lack of money
• Lack of opportunities with poor individuals, usually owing to going to shoddier schools, reduces their social mobility and thus their chance to lift themselves up and get better housing
• Lack of census data prevents the social housing agencies from properly planning and spacing out social housing
• Forcing residential builders in certain areas to have "subsidised" housing lowers the market rate for their units and ultimately hurts the housing industry. The money given to social housing should be used to build whole new houses on their own and then sold off to people so as to mask the nature of it (in this case, it means choosing lower density areas because otherwise you have to go with apartment buildings), or you subsidise the income of the poor to help pay mortgage payments (making it both welfare and subsidy to the housing industry)

Now we actually have things we can resolve instead of bitching about ideology.

Did you know there's a failed housing project near me. It's not public welfare housing. It's a private development of luxury houses.

Let's just say it is sitting empty. And yeah, the rest of us had to pay for it, because instead of some nice green space that was home to many animals, it's a clear-cut wasteland.

Speaking of development, in my college town there was an abandoned gas station that was left to rot for the longest time because no business wanted to take up the risk of cleaning it up for development. When the local government agreed to subsidize such expenditures, it got developed, and there's now a Starbucks there. Just one way how government has a role in combatting urban sprawl.

The risk of taking the clean up task? Don't we (you) have jail inmates for something?

You can make anything universally free if you teach people how to do it themselves.

"You can make anything universally free if you teach people how to do it themselves"

Great, I'm guessing you're an individualist anarchist in favor of a self-managed society.

That's not even 'free'. It might be a good investment of one's assets, but it is most certainly not free.

edited 11th May '11 7:59:01 PM by GreatLich

You guessed wrong, Emo Kitty. Self-sufficiency does not have to involve the liquidation of all group systems in favor of individual will.

Seriously. There is a whole universe in between "Government ensures free everything" and "Market competition will provide for all".

And that universe is full of robot zombie wizard kittens!

Ah, I'm dreaming. But yeah, there's a bunch of poles, but I think most people are comfortable in between.

"but I think most people are comfortable in between"

Actually most people are comfortable only on a very tiny point on a huge hypercube. Status quo bias IMO.

I've found that people are often flexible, they can go with a number of different conditions.

There is no such thing as free X. To create something you need work and resources and none of them are free. Goerment-paid X is not free X: you pay in higher taxes, more burreaucracy and more regulations. And yes, universal goverment-paid things increase laziness: why should I try to do anything if more and more things will be given to me anyway? Seriously, while I don't like welfare programs, this is even worse - the whole welfare thing can be taken away if the person who benefits from it doesn't get a job/stop drinking/etc. but if something is declared as 'free and universal', it's permanent (like: you can't loose the right to 'free and universal' health care)

Why do we have food stamps? Because people need food. Or they starve. Why do we have medicare? Because people who get injured can't work.

The entire idea that 'welfare makes people lazy' is absolute bullshit. Most of the poor, who work 2 or 3 jobs on shit pay NEED these jobs just to get by. The stereotype of a poor unemployed drunkard sitting on a couch watching tv on welfare is an absolute LIE.

Do some people abuse the system? I'll bet. I hardly think a few people who've managed to game the system justifies axing a program that millions of American need. Especially children.

/me tires of same old arguements; Socialism is ebil/capitalism is the best. Capitalism is inhumane/socialism is good.

We might disagree about welfare (I don't want to get into this talk, it's too much of the same thing) but you can't deny that the more things are 'free and universal' the less people will want to work. Guaranteed food, house, clothing and healthcare (according to OP's idea) are enough for some people. If the idea of internet access being a human right catches on, they'll also have guaranteed computer and internet. I know a lot of people who wouldn't work if there was law like this.

Well if we ever become a post-scarcity society like in science fiction. That's pretty much probably what it will end up looking like.

Re: Welfare makes people lazy. Outside pointing to obvious abuse cases (in which case, surprise! Abuse occurs in the free market too), I don't understand how this could be the case. I am currently hunting for a better paying job but if I didn't have my current, I'd MUCH rather be on unemployment and have hours in the day to hunt for a job and interview at any time, than to jump on the first minimum wage, 40-hour a week zero benefits worker drone position that comes up, and have all my time taken up working that I have none left to actually find a job. Especially if that minimum wage job is morning to late afternoon, Monday through Friday. Guess when most businesses in the US are interviewing...

Unemployment lets you potentially avoid that wage slavery situation and actually get some upward momentum.

^ I can tell you from experience, the people sitting on welfare/unemployment insurance and those without a job and looking for new are among the last people hired. Especially in the current labor surplus.