Notebook per
The Basic Income and the Welfare State
matt zwolinski mike huemer robert frank jim manzi
Citation (APA): manzi, m. z. m. h. r. f. j. (2014). The Basic Income and the Welfare State [Kindle Android version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com
Parte introduttiva
Nota - Posizione 1
i vantaggi: 1 benefici solo ai poveri... 2 facile: costi burocratici compressi... 3 meno rent seeking e gruppi di pressione annullati critiche: 1 immoralità (huemer) 2 impraticabilità : paternalismo e burocrazia riemergeranno per govrnare le eccezioni 3 inefficienza (disincentivo al lavoro sperimentato da chi ha provato Big) huemer: nessun soggetto al mondo possiede un legittimo potere politico per realizzare BIG la rettifica delle ingiustizie passate: tendono a compensarsi... x' punire degli innocenti? aumentare la libertà dei nullatenenti: + liberi di contrattare un lavoro. huemer: uno stato deve tutelare i diritti non massimizzare la libertà. max lib. implica farne fuori uno x salvarne due huemer vs frank: le tasse sono sempre unn furto... al limite sono un furto giustificato... es difesa nazionale... e x il welfare occorre ben altra giustificazione z: difficile giust.l autorità politica ma bisogna giust. anche la prop., per esempio dalla critica georgista h: non c è un parallelo: solo chi giust. la politica deve giust un eccezione... la prop. è la regola del senso comune georgismo: distribuire a tutti le risorse naturali prima di valorizzarle. h. ma il valore delle risorse senza lavoro è minimo... 3 errori di valutazione altri argomenti contro il georgismo
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 3
better than our current welfare state
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 4
far more efficient.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 4
rent-seeking.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 4
accessible by the poor,
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 6
choice between a BIG and the status quo,
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 10
The problem of political authority
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 11
When the Basic Income Guarantee Meets the Political Process by Jim Manzi
Nota - Posizione 12
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Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 12
Jim Manzi doubts that a basic income guarantee would emerge from our political process
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 13
Compromises would proliferate, as would paternalistic controls.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 13
The interests of the bureaucracy would assert themselves, and the temptation
Nota - Posizione 13
LA BUROCRAZIA SI DIFENDE
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 13
temptation to make exceptions
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 14
Moreover, when a basic income guarantee has been tried in practice, the result has consistently been a withdrawal of participants’ labor.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 14
result has consistently been a withdrawal of participants’ labor.
Nota - Posizione 15
RITIRO DAL LAVORO
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 18
massive taxpayer resentment.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 19
combination program that would include a significantly smaller cash grant and a standing offer of public employment
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 171
Is a Basic Income Permissible? Michael Huemer
Nota - Posizione 171
HIEMER@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 172
less bad
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 173
how one could defend the status quo
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 175
Is a government-provided basic income guarantee ethically permissible?
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 180
No one has political authority.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 182
exemption from the usual norms of non-aggression in interpersonal ethics
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 188
carrying out the coercive threats on recalcitrant citizens is practically necessary to maintaining a tax system in any realistic society.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 189
Even registered Democrats would agree with this.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 190
Perhaps the government is different from me
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 192
they need a theory of political authority.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 193
The argument consists in reviewing the most plausible and influential accounts
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 194
social contract, the democratic process, fairness, or utilitarian
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 200
approximation to the rectification of injustice.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 201
effects of injustices tend to wash out over time.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 204
those from whom the money is taken are not guilty
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 216
basic income insulates one from certain kinds of coercion by one’s employer.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 219
maximize freedom.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 219
protecting the rights
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 221
it is not ethically permissible to murder an innocent person, even if doing so somehow prevents two other innocent people from being murdered.
Segnalibro - Posizione 225
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 226
When the Basic Income Guarantee Meets the Political Process Jim Manzi
Nota - Posizione 227
MANZI@@@@@@@@@@
Nota - Posizione 227
MANZI@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 227
Matt Zwolinski presents a thoughtful essay in favor of a Basic Income
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 228
lawyer’s proverbial “in the alternative”
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 229
“Your honor, my client doesn’t own a dog; even if he did own a dog, then it could not have bitten this man; and even if he did own a dog that bit this man, then it must have been provoked.”
Nota - Posizione 230
LEGALISMI x
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 230
Zwolinski argues that a BIG is consistent with libertarian theory.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 232
BIG is better than the dog’s breakfast of social welfare programs that we have today.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 233
evidence indicates that it not clear that a BIG would result in a reduction in work effort.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 234
even if it did, this would not necessarily be a bad thing.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 237
But we have scientific gold standard evidence that runs exactly the other way.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 238
between 1968 and 1980.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 239
These tested a wide variety of program variants among the urban and rural poor, in better and worse macroeconomic periods, and in geographies from New Jersey to Seattle. They consistently found that the tested programsreduce the number of hours worked versus the existing welfare system, and the tested levels of progressivity of implicit tax rates did not get around this problem by encouraging work, as Zwolinski’s theoretical argument asserts they should. There was a further series of more than 30 randomized experiments conducted around the time of the welfare debates of the 1990s. These tested many ideas for improving welfare. What emerged from them was a clear picture: work requirements, and only work requirements, could be shown experimentally to get people off welfare and into jobs in a humane fashion.
Nota - Posizione 240
x I TEST DISPO
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 245
work requirements a central tenet of the new welfare
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 245
the welfare system was converted from AFDC to TANF in 1996.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 252
we can state with confidence that Zwolinski’s proposal would lead to fewer work hours in America.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 253
Zwolinski’s argument in the alternative– So what, why is this necessarily a bad thing?
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 254
highly values-laden.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 254
moral intuitions of the American electorate appear to be very negative
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 256
political collation built around the idea of free money for life
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 259
less bureaucratic, cheaper,
Nota - Posizione 259
PREGI
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 259
less paternalistic.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 260
the real comparison is not between a theoretical BIG and a theoretical means-tested welfare system;
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 262
There is nothing inherent about a BIG that will prevent Congress from creating thousands of pages of special rules, exemptions, tax expenditures, and so on, that are collectively just as convoluted as the current welfare system. After all, “tax each person a given fraction of income” is a pretty simple idea too, but look at the 2013 federal income tax code.
Nota - Posizione 264
COMPLICAZIONI DEL BIG
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 265
reemergence of the functional equivalents of many of these programs
Nota - Posizione 265
N DEMONIZZARE GLI SGGIUSTAMENTI
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 265
healthy intuitions of natural justice that are essential to maintaining a well-functioning political order.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 266
As one example, if part of the motivation for giving adults income is that they spend it supporting their children, would we really allow parents receiving taxpayer money to spend it any way they want with no requirements for child welfare beyond child abuse laws? And as another, a huge and growing portion of the cost of the welfare state is health care. Suppose we gave every adult in America an annual grant of $10,000, and some person who did not buy health insurance with it got sick with an acute, easily treatable condition. Would we really bar them from any urgent medical care and just say “Tough luck, but it’s time to die”?
Nota - Posizione 270
x ES
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 273
Zwolinski’s
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 273
assumes that we could successfully pass and enforce a constitutional amendment enshrining a BIG and nothing but a BIG as forever
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 275
evidence that such a concept has been politically unviable
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 279
Zwolinski presents no evidence that there is any prospect
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 280
I agree that a social welfare system is consistent with libertarian thought,
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 282
takes liberty to be a means
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 283
of discovery
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 283
“liberty-as-goal”
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 284
“liberty-as-means”
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 284
Hayek, for example, cannot reasonably be construed as supporting an unconditional income
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 285
society must be adaptable and willing to experiment with new approaches.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 286
Trial-and-error learning is far more central
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 289
Let’s Try a Basic Income and Public Work Robert H. Frank
Segnalibro - Posizione 290
Nota - Posizione 290
FRANK@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 355
The BIG and Work Disincentives
Nota - Posizione 355
z@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 360
Jim and Robert think that this kind of reduction of work effort is a serious problem
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 361
both are a little unclear on exactly why
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 361
It might be because allowing some lazy (dope-growing, commune-living) individuals to live
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 364
the fact that a BIG would make people less likely to work is a killer. Even if it’s a genuinely good idea, it’s simply never going to get the votes.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 370
What Does Theory Predict? What Does the Evidence Show?
Nota - Posizione 370
T
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 370
it seems like it should be obvious that a BIG would reduce work
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 373
a basic income actually has two effects
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 374
income effect, leads people to work less
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 374
substitution effect that leads people to work more
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 376
BIG would also create a stronger substitution effect, by decreasing the very high effective marginal tax rates many welfare recipients face under the current system.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 379
experiments of ’68-’80 resulted in an overall decrease in work effort. This much is uncontroversial. What’s a little less clear is the magnitude
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 382
Gary Burtless of the Brookings Institution
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 383
reduction in work effort was small
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 383
about 120 hours less per year for husbands, about 90 less for wives, and about 130 less for single mothers. That’s not nothing. But it’s about the equivalent of taking a few weeks off from a 40 hour/week job. And that’s far smaller an unemployment effect than most economic models had predicted.
Nota - Posizione 385
X
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 386
A “reduction in hours worked” is not the same as “more people spending their lives on the dole.”
Nota - Posizione 386
T
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 387
unemployment just lasted longer.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 389
A truly unconditional BIG would reduce work effort less than a NIT.
Nota - Posizione 389
T
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 394
People worked more than they said they did.
Nota - Posizione 394
T
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 395
a fairly strong incentive to underreport one’s income and hours worked.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 399
Is Less Work Necessarily Bad?
Nota - Posizione 399
T
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 400
Robert Frank
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 401
advocates a system in which the government serves as an employer of last resort as an alternative to both a pure BIG and the current welfare system.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 404
work turns less-useful things into more-useful ones.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 404
meaningful work is one of the central components of human well-being.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 405
People feel better about themselves
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 408
size matters.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 409
unemployment effects are relatively modest
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 411
freedom to do things other than work without being destitute.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 411
go back to school
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 412
improve their employment prospects.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 412
more months with their newborn child.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 413
a bit less pressure to find another job
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 414
“waste their time” sleeping in and watching television.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 415
Brink Lindsey cites some data
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 415
people freed from the necessity of work by a BIG would probably just squander it.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 416
lives would not be improved by a little more sleep and relaxation,
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 419
Work is a central component of both personal and social well-being. But it is not the only component.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 420
culture, tend to err on the side of over-valuing. John Maynard Keynes thought so
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 424
Herbert Spencer,
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 424
“gospel of relaxation,”
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 426
the issue of work disincentives involves questions of trade-offs. One cannot criticize a BIG merely by showing that it would create some disincentives to work.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 434
National Defense vs Welfare Michael Huemer
Nota - Posizione 434
HUEMER@@@@@@@@@@!@@
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 435
A country without the power to tax couldn’t field an army
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 437
“If I don’t do X, then something bad will happen; therefore, X is not a form of theft” is an invalid argument.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 440
taxation is justified even if it is theft.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 441
From the premise that taxation is justified to prevent a Russian invasion (or similar event), it does not follow that taxation is justified to implement a social welfare program.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 443
Jean Valjean steals a loaf of bread
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 446
Stealing to feed the ducks might be justified nonetheless– but some other argument would have to be given.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 447
Similarly, stealing in order to provide social welfare might be justified, but some argument other than the appeal to national defense would need to be given.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 448
On Safety Nets, Political Authority, and Henry George: A Reply to Huemer Matt Zwolinski
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 450
twenty years.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 452
everything after that concession
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 455
ideal system
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 455
better system
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 460
reparations argument,
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 460
Hayekian freedom-based argument
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 465
something special about states
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 468
Huemer’s argument against the BIG only works if we presuppose the existence and legitimacy of property rights.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 470
how he thinks those property rights are justified.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 479
argument for why property rights are obviously justified, but political authority isn’t.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 480
standard Lockean accounts
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 481
Henry Georgeand
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 482
own their bodies
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 482
external resources that their labor did not create?
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 486
“Lockean Proviso”
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 487
must not make others worse off
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 497
Rights of private property generate increased welfare and freedom for most. But might there not be some who slip through the cracks?
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 510
the point of a BIG is to ensure the satisfaction of the Lockean proviso,
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 512
a tax on the unimproved value of natural resources is the most morally defensible
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 513
Property, Georgism, and the Safety Net Michael Huemer
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 519
If there were no property rights, taxation would be impermissible anyway
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 525
in endorsing property rights, we are not setting up some agent with special entitlements and moral exemptions that apply to no other agent.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 533
only very few individuals
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 534
provide a basic income to everyone.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 541
I think the amount of income that a proper Georgist scheme would provide would be minimal
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 546
gold costs $1300 an ounce. But this is the price of the resource after all the work
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 548
resource underground, such as oil or gold.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 549
discovering the location
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 550
To truly capture the unimproved value of land,
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 554
almost all of this value is due to human activity,
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 556
in Montana for 8 cents per square foot. If we apply the Georgist rationale strictly, the 8 cents is more relevant than the $800.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 559
In light of these reflections, I do not think that anyone should expect a livable salary from their fair share of the world’s natural resource rents.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 560
How Much Disincentive Is Too Much? Jim Manzi
Nota - Posizione 561
MANZI@@@@@@@@@@@
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 563
Matt now accepts
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 564
a reduction in work effort.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 564
decrease was small,
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 565
caused primarily by non-employed people remaining unemployed
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 565
less under an unconditional BIG,
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 566
bias because it was survey-based,
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 566
using administrative data, “much of the apparent unemployment effect disappeared altogether.”
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 570
To my knowledge, two of the NIT experiments were subject to post hoc reanalysis in which administrative data was used
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 571
in neither case would the administrative data have made the unemployment effect “disappear altogether.”
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 572
Even according to the paper that Matt cites as evidence, in one of these experiments “much” of the employment effect would disappear if measured using administrative data, and in the other the change in effect was “somewhat smaller.”
Nota - Posizione 574
x
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 576
the later series of more than 30 welfare experiments in the 1990s were designed from the beginning to be read using administrative data,
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 577
absence of work requirements led to statistically significantly lower employment and earnings using this data.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 579
Matt says, however, that this reduction in work effort was small
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 580
One problem with this is that the NIT experiments measured the impact of this policy change versus the baseline of the American welfare system circa 1975. The current welfare system has much more stringent work requirements, which were proved in the1990s welfare experiments to increase work effort.
Nota - Posizione 582
x PROBLEMA SULLA MAGNIGUDO
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 586
all of these debates are about quantity, not sign.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 587
second part
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 588
less work would not necessarily be a bad thing.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 590
we must compare the costs of work reduction (and presumably other drawbacks) to the benefits created by a BIG.
Nota - Posizione 591
UNA WUSTIONE DI VALORI
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 595
Matt wants to assume away democratic governance. Matt may be right, and the American electorate may be wrong, but it is clear that they disagree on this point. To grossly oversimplify, the amount of work disincentive is prohibitive versus the benefits of leisure in the view of an electorate that has never supported a BIG in two hundred years, and has been moving away from this concept and toward stricter work requirements for decades.
Nota - Posizione 598
x
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 598
Matt needs to change a lot of minds before this would become law
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 604
Matt is self-consciously proposing a radical departure from current policy
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 605
He is then asserting that he can demand that those who oppose the change must provide evidence
Segnalibro - Posizione 607
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 607
More about Georgism and Land Taxes Michael
Nota - Posizione 607
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Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 611
who is entitled to the population-density value
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 614
landowners have no special claim to the population density value;
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 616
assumption of all those who give large estimates
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 619
price they initially paid to purchase their land
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 626
trade opportunities, people who do not contribute
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 629
unemployed people should receive little or none of the population-density value,
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 631
the people whom the basic income proponents are most concerned to help are the ones least entitled to receive it.
