Krugman, Human Weakness, and Desert

How long is it going to take people to entertain the possibility, simply for the sake of argument, that Krugman is not a moron? That he knows what the effects of the perverse incentives he pushes are — and that’s what he really wants?

I think Krugman has another motivation for wanting to maintain generous government welfare programs, despite their track record of major deterioration in social behavior of their recipients. It’s simply to help justify big central government; that’s his world view. A pre-Great Society America which provided welfare almost exclusively by private charities, local (county) governments, and some state government removes justification for the current massive scope of federal domestic programs. If the feds don’t take care of the truly poor and downtrodden, why should they have a plethora of subsidies for farmers, exporters, you-name-it middle class groups — which have the ability to take care of themselves? (Calvin Coolidge: “The government cannot relieve from toil. The normal must take care of themselves!” I’d surmise that was cw in pre-New Deal America. In fact, FDR said AFDC should be limited to widows and orphans, and not reward the morally promiscuous. That stricture ended in the 1960s generally, sooner in some states.)

Of course, the social statistics measuring behavior circa pre-Great Society vs. today show a tight correlation between their deterioration and increasing federal government welfare outlays. For example, in 1965, 5% of births were to single mothers; today it is 42%. In 1966, 14% of the population lived below the official poverty level; today it’s over 15%, despite substantial gains in labor productivity and income over those 4+ decades. Single-parent households comprise about 30% of those families living in poverty today. The number of single-parent households has risen substantially, thanks to the high out-of-wedlock birthrates since the 1970s. In 1965, there were about 250,000 incarcerated in all our prisons, jails, & lockups. Today it’s about 2.3 million. Adjusting for population growth, we have 7 times as many incarcerated. Something like 70% of those incarcerated were born to single mothers – living in those impoverished households. The crime rate for those raised in single-parent households is over 4 times higher than those raised in married-couple families.

“Correlation doesn’t prove causality” of course. But there were an extensive set of negative income tax (NIT) experiments between 1969 and the late 1970s that showed that simply giving poor families a “negative income tax” resulted in larger family breakups than those receiving traditional welfare. That strongly suggested that giving the poor cash payments did indeed tempt many of them to indulge in less than prudent, delaying of gratification lifestyles. That’s why they dropped the NIT in the 1970s. Now, it’s (sort of) made a comeback with the EITC, but that has the wrinkle of going only to the working poor. I believe you must have a job to qualify for the EITC. I still suspect that the EITC does result in a higher percentage of poor lifestyle choices, just maybe not as many as the original NIT idea.

Most government spending goes to seniors and the military but you would think otherwise from reading Brooks and Caplan.

Murray seemed most upset with men who don’t marry when I saw him on TV. What welfare spending goes to these men? I don’t know of any. I know of huge amounts of government money to help out bankers – who now claim they are “taxed enough already”.

Caplan and Brooks criticize high school dropouts. High school completion rates have not changed much for decades. What has changed are marriage rates. I think to understand why marriage rates have changed the income earned by men and women is a big factor. Murray seems to think what the upper class preaches to society is more important then the relative incomes of men and women.

Great post. Please correct the spelling of “dessert” in the title.

[The spelling is correct. It’s a form of the word “deserve.” One “s”. But perhaps after reading the post one might also enjoy some dessert.–Econlib Ed.]

Mercer asked:

Murray seemed most upset with men who don’t marry when I saw him on TV. What welfare spending goes to these men? I don’t know of any.

I tend to think of the subsidization of single motherhood to also be a kind of welfare for men who reproduce without marriage.

@Mercer

I have always thought that main reason for the existence of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Government schools was to aid the poor. It seems to me that for most people how make above median life time income and a substantial percentage of those below median do not need those programs but that the programs are kept for the sake of the poor.

[Comment removed for supplying false email address. Email the webmaster@econlib.org to request restoring this comment. A valid email address is required to post comments on EconLog and EconTalk.–Econlib Ed.]

Doesn’t this argument miss the point that despite moral hazard, society is better with these social programs than without, both quantitatively (e.g. GDP growth) and qualitatively (e.g. Hunger, disease, mobility, longevity).

So long as you’re touting quantitative evidence, kindly point toward the evidence conclusively demonstrating that social programs more effectively tackle “Hunger, disease, mobility, longevity” than an unhampered market economy in no uncertain terms.

And freedom? Is society better off with freedom quantitatively or qualitatively? Or, is it merely public goods and negative externalities that matter in these discussions.

You may be missing a great deal of the depth in Caplan’s arguments.

It is simply the responsibility of capability. Those who fortune has allowed to be capable enough to succeed and strong enough to avoid the traps of laziness and irresponsibility have a moral obligation to aid those not so fortunate.

Of course the ire of liberals like myself is directed at those who are capable, but refuse their moral responsibilities. Unlike the lazy and irresponsible, whose nature has not given them the ability to do any better, you, who are both smart and strong, deliberately *refuse* to meet your moral obligations.

Nature has provided the poor their excuse. You, sir, have none.

🙂

More seriously, I have grown up with the understanding that my ability to study hard and work hard is a blessing, like good health, not some great personal virtue. Given the advantages of decent enough natural talents, middle-class loving parents, and ample educational opportunities, I would expect no less. But those expectations are confined to myself and my family. When looking at others who failed, it seems the height of arrogance to assume that I would have succeeded had I their disadvantages.

Way back in psychology class, I was taught that (as a general rule) father love was conditional, but mother love was unconditional. In other words, the love of your father depended on your actions, but your mother would love you no matter what.

It’s long seemed to me that many political issues break down along these lines. Conservatives and even libertarians are generally not opposed to helping the “deserving poor,” (a term long out of fashion), but often object to helping the “undeserving poor” (i.e. the poor who got that way through their own actions). Liberals and progressives, on the other hand, make no such distinctions, preferring to point fingers at social forces outside of individual control. Thus, in their view, government should help those who need it, regardless of their actions.

Elimination of welfare (the money that goes to the poor, irresponsible people but not the money that goes to the elderly)will not solve the deficit problem.

Maybe not at the federal level, but remember that a lot of social safety net programs like food stamps and Medicaid are funded (at least partially) at the state level, and there are an awful lot of state budgets that are oozing red ink.

Also, the idea that cutting one particular kind of spending won’t solve our deficit problem in and of itself is irrelevant. I’m reminded of that scene from The Wire where it’s revealed to the mayor that the Baltimore City School system is running a huge deficit:

“How do you lose 54 million dollars?”
“One million at a time.”

“Because they will soon pick up guns to go after the people who don’t want to pay taxes”

Really? So how are they going to identify those who “want” from those who don’t? If they are too lazy to go to the target range how are they going to win the gunfight? Especially if they cannot afford a decent rifle, or shotgun?

I’m awaiting another comment that is ridiculous as your first.

BC writes:

However, lurking in the moral opposition to welfare is an unstated presumption that poor means “lazy and irresponsible.”

Citation needed.

Please see Scott Beaulier and Bryan Caplan, “Behavioral Economics and Perverse Effects of the Welfare State” (Kyklos 2007) for a direct statement of my point.

Watch Fox News for the unstated presumption. Libertarians and Republicans want to dismantle the welfare state and reduce taxes. Typically in those same segments they denounce the “irresponsible poor” and complain about the injustice of the responsible paying for the irresponsible.

I am biased. Too many rich, middle class men (of which I am a part) mistake an accident of birth for a life of moral superiority and virtue.

make it easier for you to fulfill your extraordinarily condescending sort of “responsibility”.

Well, that’s the point, isn’t it? Not holding people responsible for their misfortunes *is* a form of condescension, but then so is giving up your seat to the elderly.

PJR: It’s fine to have a guilty conscience for winning the sperm lottery if that’s your thing. Less admirable is the general tendency of well-off white liberals to want to assuage their senselessly-guilty consciences with Other People’s Money

“Too many rich, middle class men (of which I am a part) mistake an accident of birth for a life of moral superiority and virtue”

Own Goal.

PJR:

I think the objections against government money flowing to poor people are these:

1) Money flowing to a person without merit alters that person’s sense of incentive, and creates a vicious circle. You are right to imply that poverty and the need for help are not necessarily permanent conditions, but have we have solved the problem of distinguishing the “permanently unincentivized” class from the “just get me over this hopefully-temporary hump” class?

2) Money flowing from the government to a large class of people creates a dependency upon the government, and therefore a great power within the government. The more that money flows through the government, the greater the quantity of money that flows, and greater the percentages of population which benefit from it, all lead to greater and greater power for the government that controls that flow.

Once the government has put its feeding hand to all the population, which citizen would bite it? And because the idea of government is still one of omniservice, it is possible that a citizen who receives government help in one aspect of life may be unwilling to challenge government on an entirely unrelated aspect, for fear that the first part might dry up.

In other words, we pay our phone bill separately from our gas bill, and both separately from our laundry bill, but we don’t pay our Medicare bill separately from our Defense bill, our Food and Drug Safety bill, or our Federal Highway Maintenance bill. Imagine the results of that type of split. And incidentally, as a result of that thought experiment, you may also understand why people are so opposed to so-called Lexus Lanes. Any money not controlled by government is money that cannot be applied as leverage in another, unrelated, part of the balance sheet.

JV…

(1) No one is disputing that money handed out to irresponsible, layabout, wastes of space is a bad thing. I question the size of that class of people.

Having said, “no one is disputing…”, I will now argue with myself. Why is that person unincentivized? Is the government handout causing that disincentive, their circumstances, their background, or the lack of typical middle class opportunities ?

As I said previously, “do not judge a person until you have walked a mile in their shoes.” It is arrogance to think that if you or I were exposed to the exact same set of life circumstances we would’ve somehow made lemonade out of lemon’s.

(2) The poor have typically seen about 10% of total government spending each year, for the rest, see defense, healthcare and the elderly. I don’t see the government’s power increasing from the money flowing to poor people.

An alternate phrasing of Caplan’s point can be stated thusly:

“Behold, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed a commandment of yours, but you never gave me a goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this, your son, came, who has devoured your living with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him.”

Unlike the lazy and irresponsible, whose nature has not given them the ability to do any better, you, who are both smart and strong, deliberately *refuse* to meet your moral obligations.

Nature has provided the poor their excuse. You, sir, have none.

What if I’m simply too heartless to care about the plight of the lazy and the irresponsible to want help them? Is that a valid “excuse?” Is not callousness a trait that’s largely inborn like laziness or stupidity?

Also, why come after me? The poor, you seem to concede, are too lazy and irresponsible to avoid poverty. Your solution to this is to forcibly confiscate money and resources from the productive class and use it to subsidize the non-productive. Wouldn’t it be more equitable to force the lazy and irresponsible to work and leave me, the innocent bystander, alone? Why shouldn’t the target of your plan to use the coercive power of the state to help the poor simply be the poor themselves?

You play, you pay. It’s called Taking Responsibility For Your Own Life. If you want to ride a motorcycle withoug a helmet, that’s your business. However, I do object strenuously to you expecting me to pay your medical bills for the rest of your life when you splatter your head on the pavement.

If you want to quit high school and get your girlfriend pregnant, more power to you. Just don’t expect me to pay for your poor choices. Take Responsibility For Your Own Life.

Why is this such a terrible, horrible idea? Grow up, people.

Buck Bradley…I do not feel guilty about winning the sperm lottery. I just have a broader perspective about the world.

—-
“Lazy, irresponsible” poor people are the conservative boogyman. Conservatives demonize this nebulous, poorly defined class of people to attack the entire social insurance safety net.

Who is in this class of people?

The general category of welfare (not including Social Security and Medicare) accounts for less than 5% of GDP and less than 10% of government spending at all levels. The bulk of most welfare is unemployment and worker’s compensation. Of that share, the amount going to potentially “undeserving” people is less than half (and quite possibly lower, depending upon the fine grain categories).

Will conservatives stop complaining about welfare and money going to the “undeserving” if we just stopped this tiny social insurance subsidy (2.5% of GDP)? But to be clear, conservatives are using the flow of a tiny fraction of a small percentage of government money to truly irresponsible people as representative of the entire system.

PJR @ 11:50 am:

The Feds have averaged 20% of GDP in taxes for the last few decades. I’m not sure how 5% of GDP spent on welfare can be ten percent of Fed expenditures.

Whether it is 5% of GDP or 2.5%, it is still a heck of a lot of money. Looks like the War on Poverty is a hopeless quagmire, and we should withdraw the troops. I will submit a timetable if you like.

(If you want, you can put in an extra 2.5% of your income to the cause. Money, mouth, yada yada.)

delayna@12:40

I am including federal, state, and local in my calculations for taxes and welfare.

My objection is to social insurance, period. SS (to use one example) was sold as insurance, but it is insolvent, a Ponzi scheme that cannot live up to the promises it has made. If a private company sold it as a product, the officers of the company would be in jail. No, I don’t know how to fix the mess we are currently in. It would have been a (relative) cinch thirty years ago–except for a bunch of politicians having to risk their power.

Coercive redistribution is stealing by having the government point the gun for you. Coercive redistribution to the irresponsible is the same, and even worse.

Because:

Welfare doesn’t help poor people, it keeps them poor. Work, thrift, education–anything that can help to pull someone from poverty to working class–is actively discouraged by welfare.

Charity is a virtuous act, intended to help someone. Knowing that the money taken from me for welfare payments is as likely to harm someone as to help them just makes me feel worse about it.

Eugene…not a bad idea.

Ixak writes:

An alternate phrasing of Caplan’s point can be stated thusly:

“Behold, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed a commandment of yours, but you never gave me a goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this, your son, came, who has devoured your living with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him.”

That’s a good analogy, but perhaps for reasons you didn’t intend. By the time the Prodigal Son returned, he had already changed. Throwing a little shindig to celebrate the return of the Prodigal Son did not encourage him to go back and live a bad life and the father knew it. I think a more telling part of the story was that the father did not send assistance to his son while he was out living the wild life. It was because he had to suffer the consequences of his bad decisions that he was forced to humble himself and change. If someone had subsidized his riotous living and cushioned him from the consequences, he probably would have kept it up and not returned. If the father had said, “Well, he just wasn’t endowed with the sense of responsibility I was blessed with, so it’s my moral obligation to make things easier for him” the results would have been decidedly immoral.

Tom West:

Those who fortune has allowed to be capable enough to succeed and strong enough to avoid the traps of laziness and irresponsibility have a moral obligation to aid those not so fortunate.

I hardly think that aiding lazy and irresponsible people will assist said people in becoming strong enough to avoid the traps of laziness and irresponsibility.

I have grown up with the understanding that my ability to study hard and work hard is a blessing, like good health, not some great personal virtue.

I’m not sure what the point of this statement is. Success depends on actual work, not merely on the ability to do so. All the ability in the world won’t do you any good if you don’t use it.

And how do you know which other people can’t study hard and work hard, and which other people can but simply chose not to? How about if the ability, and the decision, to study hard and work hard, is something that can be built up over time, like muscles? So you start off with the ability to study a very little bit, you then chose to study a very little bit, you become better at making yourself study a very little bit, so your ability to study moves up to being the ability to study a little bit, repeat, until you have the ability to study hard? After all, that’s how people gain the ability to lift great weights, by repeatedly lifting weights they can lift and continually pushing their boundaries. Abilities are not invariant to past work. It strikes me that your ability to study hard and work hard may well be the result of some great personal virtue (I know I’m not very good at making myself study hard and/or work hard, I have to use all sorts of tricks to accomplish such things).

When looking at others who failed, it seems the height of arrogance to assume that I would have succeeded had I their disadvantages.

I think what matters here is the definition of disadvantages. You earlier said that “those who fortune has allowed to be … strong enough to avoid the traps of laziness and irresponsibility” have a moral obligation to aid those not so fortunate. I think that most of us who emphasis personal responsibility consider that assisting those who fall into the traps of laziness and irresponsibility is a disadvantage to said people, that it makes said people less capable.

I don’t know about you, but I know people who have grown up knowing that they would inherit wealth (from rich relatives), and never had to work. They typically don’t succeed, they never settle to a job. I know enough about my own tendencies to laziness to suspect that in that situation I would be the same, I would likely have not accomplished what I have.