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When will liberty's day arrive?
Life without socks would be... "undignified," but no one recommends government provision or even sock vouchers. Relative to income, socks are sufficiently cheap. There is some inequality of socks, but it seems that just about everybody -- even the poor -- "has enough." We don't even force people to buy socks for their kids.
Might there come a time when health care and education fall under the same rubric?
Yes, I know that, due to rising labor costs, health care and education might continue to eat up an increasing percentage of national income. But still, can't "rich enough" people make do? Living in Aspen might cost half your income, but if you're a multi-millionaire no one weeps for you.
Of course today's poor aren't rich enough for us to remove government aid. But when will the splendid era of libertarian freedom be possible? Today's poor are much richer than the poor fifty years ago, and the poor of the future are likely to be richer yet. Won't the welfare state, at some point, simply become unnecessary?
Readers, please tell me in the comments when the time will come for dismantling the welfare state. Will you sign your name to a pledge:
"I am a left-winger, but only until 2078"?
More elegant would be:
"I'm a 2096 libertarian."
Social democracy is but a mere transitional strategy.
If this were 1890, what Year of Libertarian Freedom would you have named?
Posted by Tyler Cowen on March 28, 2007 at 07:36 AM in Economics | Permalink
Comments
Never (using that measure). Preferences change over time and so does the perception of what is undignified.
Posted by: Robert at Mar 28, 2007 7:44:30 AM
good news
thank you for infos
Posted by: barbie oyunları at Mar 28, 2007 7:49:22 AM
Never ever. While there are people in the U.S. who do actually live in squalor, the label "the poor" covers an enormous number of people who are amazingly rich by historical standards. Tons of interesting-tasting food to eat, powered transportation, broad variety of entertainment, etc.
The label does not properly refer to an objective reality. Rather, it is politically useful in triggering group association based on envy and greed.
Posted by: Mark Nau at Mar 28, 2007 8:04:37 AM
Funny thing. One of our readers at Angry Bear (we're left of center) had a proposal that should get us to that ideal Libertarian point much sooner. To summarize (more here):
The right claims ... that economic mobility is alive and well in the US. ... I propose that we increase taxes on high income individuals (income taxes, payroll taxes, social security taxes) and lower them for the low income individuals since the right claims that these are just the same folks at different periods of their lives. It therefore all balances out since a single individual gets the benefits of low taxes early in life, which allows them to accumulate capital quickly so as to be more productive and engage in risk taking/wealth-generating activities earlier than they would otherwise.
Posted by: cactus at Mar 28, 2007 8:09:19 AM
I'm on board for dismantling it today on moral and Constitutional grounds, if not economic ones!
Posted by: Chris Meisenzahl at Mar 28, 2007 8:10:00 AM
The time has come to dismantle at least most of the welfare state, although it might take 5?, 7? years to ween people off of it. I guess that makes me a push the button libertarian more or less. In 1890 England I would have been an 1870 liberal.
We did well enough before the welfare state, even during the revolutionary days of industry.
Posted by: John Goes at Mar 28, 2007 8:10:58 AM
The poor have gotten a lot richer, which is good, but in a lot of cases they haven't gotten less miserable (crime, addiction, social exclusion, etc.). I don't know exactly why this is, nor do I know when it will stop being true, if ever. But I'm not OK with getting rid of the welfare state until it does, though the kinds of programs we need might change over time.
Two questions for your list:
1. How much different would things have turned out if Abraham Lincoln had lived?
2. What's the best restaraunt in the DC area for someone who is not an adventurous foodie, but just wants a really, really high quality nice meal?
Posted by: David J. Balan at Mar 28, 2007 8:22:26 AM
Readers, please tell me in the comments when the time will come for dismantling the welfare state.
"Propertarian." AFAIK, there's more to being a libertarian than being anti-tax.
Posted by: SomeCallMeTim at Mar 28, 2007 8:22:28 AM
Might there come a time when health care and education fall under the same rubric?
Both (especially health care) are labour intensive and so surely fall prey to Baumol's cost-disease at various levels
The ability to solve this relies on increased automation - so draw your own conclusions.
Posted by: Chris Stiles at Mar 28, 2007 8:36:47 AM
Health care is a unique case. The idea that our bodies are so special as to justify any expense in keeping them healthy and well functioning, and doing any less is undignified, puts it in a different category than socks. We don't fret that the wealthy may purchase $200 cashmere leggings while the poor make do with Hanes that cost $3 for a six pack because it's not a matter of our sacred bodies.
Likewise, in developed states we are less concerned about hunger, because very few go hungry. This despite the fact that the wealthy can enjoy luxurious food that the poor cannot even imagine; they savor $500 bottles of wine while the poor swill their Natty Light. This doesn't strike us as tragic because the poor, while fed with less tasty and interesting food, are not being physically injured the way they were when they were hungry. Notably, most concern about the inequality of food in the U.S. now revolves around the way the poor are experiencing health problems from eating cheap fast food and processed snacks.
But of course hunger used to be an issue, until technology and better law and institutions brought us above the substistence level of calories per capita, and now the inequality seems less troubling to most, and we are less apt to use government intervention to end that inequality. Will technology and instutions do the same for health care, make it so cheap that we won't care about the inequality?
I am skeptical. There is no natural "good enough" point for health care. Unlike socks and other clothing, there is no "no longer naked and cold" point. Unlike food, there is no "no longer hungry, emaciated, and bloated" point. Unlike housing there is no "no longer shivering on the street" point. At least not that I can think of. As long as a given procedure or drug has a nontrivial better chance of saving a life, it will seem uncomfortable to most people that your chances at a healthly life are determined by your wealth.
A related observation is the way we view conspicuous consumption. Even if we are against strong redistribution, most view popping a Jeroboam of Veuve or buying a $5000 handbag with a bit of distaste. But far less people would complain about someone getting the best, most expensive heart surgery or treatment for brain cancer.
The only other thought is that there may be some point where we reach a point of diminishing returns in health care so dramatic that the new drug is actually trivially superior if at all the the old, public domain, one; the new imaging device does not provide any advantage in diagnosis over the previous. We may reach this point as we bump up against the limits of the human body. But I wouldn't count on it.
Posted by: Brant at Mar 28, 2007 8:44:18 AM
We've already seen a move from talking about poverty to talking about equality. People will find a way to tell other people what to do while making themselves feel righteous.
Posted by: josh at Mar 28, 2007 8:47:34 AM
I vote for the welfare state to stay! As long as there is radical uncertainty and decreasing reliance on families, I don’t see anything wrong with reserving an option to have a little padding from the state.
Posted by: Yan Li at Mar 28, 2007 8:48:35 AM
"It therefore all balances out since a single individual gets the benefits of low taxes early in life, which allows them to accumulate capital quickly so as to be more productive and engage in risk taking/wealth-generating activities earlier than they would otherwise."
Um, Cactus, did nobody ever teach you about distortionary costs of taxation? Those would still exist under this scheme. In this case, the person early in life then wouldn't have the same incentives to save and invest and accumulate capital given their high future tax burden.
Posted by: Keith at Mar 28, 2007 8:51:07 AM
The comparison makes no sense because we do make people obtain socks for their kids. Growing up in rural NY state (I left school 15 years ago, so it's not a long-long-ago story), parents whose kids showed up to school without adequate clothing were usually threatened with a visit from Social Services. If the family didn't have and couldn't afford sufficient clothing, arrangements would be made through local charities and agencies, but the threat of legal action was always there.
The people who can't afford socks may be extreme outliers, but it's those outliers that you have to account for to successfully change policies in a society that believes in anecdotes more than actual evidence.
Posted by: James Clippinger at Mar 28, 2007 8:53:17 AM
um, cactus,
Economists wouldn't exactly expect increasing the price of social mobility to increase the quantity of social mobility.
Posted by: josh at Mar 28, 2007 8:53:29 AM
Actually, how much does health care suffer from Baumol's cost disease?
Pharmaceuticals don't appear to suffer from Baumol's cost disease, and neither does diagnostic software. It looks like medical care will simply become more automated over time.
Posted by: Keith at Mar 28, 2007 8:54:25 AM
Think "Star Trek": Health care costs too can be reduced by letting machines do more of the work. For starters, think of a nanodevice that can do hundreds of different blood tests in a second. It might only be when it comes to surgery that you need a highly skilled human.
I tend to ask people "Is Star Trek capitalist and socialist?" and it's hard to give an answer. Things would look the same either way. Politics, indeed, are dependent on our circumstances.
Even in 2078 someone can still be left-wing, but the issues of the day will be very different.
Posted by: Macneil at Mar 28, 2007 8:57:56 AM
I think we define acceptable as a subset of the possible. I think at some point things like traveling, long vacations, child car.
Posted by: Michael Foody at Mar 28, 2007 9:06:45 AM
welfare state cannot end until warfare state ends. fascism and communism are two sides of the same coin.
warfare state can only end if (1) people wake up and demand it and government policies are enacted accordigly (highly unlikely in my opinion, given the amount of apathy, misinformation, disinformation, and corruption) or (2) the government collapses or self-destructs.
Posted by: kid mercury at Mar 28, 2007 9:11:40 AM
When should it be dismantled? Yesterday. When will it be dismantled? Never. The poverty industry is too powerful and well-entrenched to ever get rid of it.
Posted by: Ned at Mar 28, 2007 9:16:23 AM
Health care yes, education no. Education is mostly about signaling and status, so good slots will always be expensive. I could learn more today from reading blogs than I did from my private high school, but I'm not going to get a job with a resume that says "6 years of reading blogs."
Health care, OTH, is scalable and we have already seen a shift of health care spending from doctors (labor intensive) to drugs (not labor intensive), which decline in price as they go off patent and as better drugs become available. How many of today's surgeries and hospitalizations will be unnecessary when we have a good weight loss drug and a stem cell injection to fix diabetes?
I'd give health care 50 years to reach this point for the non-elderly, although many people who grew old before superdrugs were available will continue to need expensive care.
Posted by: DK at Mar 28, 2007 9:18:14 AM
I think the key difference in Star Trek is that transaction costs have been greatly reduced by zero cost energy and replicators (which function by reversing E=MC^2 so energy must be free to make more than an atom or two). In a world with low transaction costs does the poilitical assignment of rights matter as much as it does in our world?
Posted by: nelsonal at Mar 28, 2007 9:19:42 AM
The poverty industry is too powerful and well-entrenched to ever get rid of it.
That's probably the funniest thing I've read all month.
Posted by: hayden at Mar 28, 2007 9:44:12 AM
I don't think it’s a matter of static material wealth at some point in time T(x), but of a "wealth growth rate" if you will. In other words we will ALL have to get REAL RICH, and do it REAL FAST over a short time interval. Otherwise adaptation will kick in. You can see this adaptation in Austin right now with the low income housing bond measure that passed last fall. For 160g's a "low-income" family can buy a $600,000 house. That’s adaptation for ya'.
So to your question of “when do the shackles come off?” - Well to paraphrase a response I absolutely loathe - “Its not a matter of time tables, it's conditions the on the ground”. And that condition would be an explosion in wealth across the board.
That’s the best I got.
Posted by: steveintheknow at Mar 28, 2007 9:47:41 AM
Ah, were it so that practical material comforts was the defining criteria in determining when to scale back the redistributive state--rather than the relative and comparative differences between the members thereof.
A democratic harbor filled with everything from multiple rowboats to the Queen Mary ensures those in the smaller vessels will vote themselves their share. Similarly, a democratic harbor filled with yachts of varying degrees of creature comforts will also find that those with the slightly less well-appointed will vote themselves a share of the grandiose.
Posted by: downeast at Mar 28, 2007 9:51:30 AM
Education can be provided cheaply enough, ~ $3000/yr, for almost everyone to afford a good one.
You mention the declining real cost of goods and that's fair enough.
But what about the fact that many goods are positional?
The strong egalitarian streak will always try to "push down the ceiling." In order to narrow disparities, they will quash excellence. They don't care about "raising the floor" so the poor have enough. They are driven by envy and spite, a la the proverbial "crabs in the bucket."
Also, rigid regulation and welfare state paradoxes allow them to earn hideous rents at others' expense.
See, oh, I dunno, everything the teachers' unions have ever done. There's a reason that they oppose giving even the worst off students a choice.
Victory is our only option.
Posted by: muddled at Mar 28, 2007 9:58:34 AM
close your tags, people geez
Posted by: muddled at Mar 28, 2007 10:00:35 AM
The difference between education and healthcare and socks, to use your example, is that socks are current consumption while education and healthcare are forms of capital expenditures that increase the production possibility curve for the entire economy that we all benefit from. You may argue that the private sector can do a better job of providing education, but that does not change the point that education and healthcare have a very different role in the economic system then the provision of basic consumption items like socks. I have not seen you make the argument that basic education should not be compulsory.
Posted by: spencer at Mar 28, 2007 10:00:47 AM
didn't a wise man once say that the poor will always be with us?
so long as there are always alcoholics and drug addicts, there will always be people without adequate socks, or healthcare...
Posted by: Chris at Mar 28, 2007 10:12:37 AM
Is this a question of singularity?
The way I interpret the question, the labor costs of healthcare become irrelevant the day we are able to move our brains into shiny new robot bodies as quickly and easily as changing our socks. The labor costs of education become irrelevant when we are able upgrade our brains with cheap, mass-produced chips purchased at Wal-Mart.
I was about to say that since neither of these events would eliminate inequality, the welfare state would not be eliminated, but intead simply morph into something else. But since I can't imagine what that 'something else' is, and since education/health care are the operative issues here, I think that this scenario does effectively eliminate the welfare state as it is perceived today.
Posted by: Independent George at Mar 28, 2007 10:28:26 AM
Let's see if I can close this tag. I'm a left winger, but only until 5000 BC.
Posted by: Constant at Mar 28, 2007 10:29:33 AM
Tyler,
So I thought I’d add a comment. Amartya Sen argues that as time goes on and we become richer, many of the new goods become required to live life effectively. So consider an automobile. You didn’t need one to have a job 100 years ago, but now you do. And sometimes that’s hard on people. It’s a big cost, having a car.
Sen argues for this reason that absolute poverty can increase or at least its elimination can be slowed by economic progress – at least in terms of persons capability functionings. The problem is how circumstances and technologies sync up. Today I need to learn how to read to do well, I need to know how to drive a car and own one, and I can’t build a house out of straw and some trees from the backyard. That imposes costs, I think.
If that process continues, we might NEVER get to a point where we need no safety net, so long as the costs imposed on the poor by being at the backend of economic progress are severe enough for their costs to outstrip their benefits sometime.
It’s also worth noting that our notion of a ‘basic need’ is socially constructed. Spencer notes this. As time goes by and more and more people have more and more stuff, our notion of basic need will keep up with it. Note that a college education is becoming a basic need. In 50 years it will be. This probably also means that we’ll need a safety net for a long, long time – at least as long as this process keeps up with economic progress. Today poor persons don’t need food to be provided by the government, but maybe they did 100 years ago. And maybe in 100 years, healthcare and education won’t be there, but say, psychiatric enhancements may be.
So that’s why I’m an 2XXX libertarian. Eventually we’ll hit the singularity, I think. You know, before the year 3000. But these trends worry me enough to think that relative poverty is important enough to where we’ll need a safety net for the reasonably conceivable future.
Posted by: Kevin at Mar 28, 2007 10:30:09 AM
Oddly enough, the richer we are, the more poverty we can afford. So we could get even more poverty.
Example: in olden days, a woman would have to put up with an unpleasant or abusive husband, and the prospects of starvation kept her from leaving him. Now, we are rich enough so such a woman can leave her husband; she is likely to have a spell of poverty on her own, but at higher incomes, she prefers that to staying in the marriage.
Another example: single women having babies without marriage. It was a dead end centuries ago; now woman can afford it, even though many of them will be in poverty.
Another example: drug addiction or alcoholism -- a quick trip to death's door in older days, but now people with such problems can live, but likely in poverty.
Another example: in olden days, old people did not live long. Now, old people have much longer life expectancies, thanks to higher GDP and the technology that produced it. That means more old people, many of whom will be in poverty because of inadequate savings.
So I don't expect poverty to diminish even as per capital GDP rises. Quite the contrary.
Posted by: B.H. at Mar 28, 2007 10:33:52 AM
The poor will become rich enough when we end the welfare state!
I am a 1776 libertarian.
Posted by: liberty at Mar 28, 2007 10:46:15 AM
Lefties, fess up, the welfare state/equal opportunity etc. is the project that makes a "we" doing something for "us." It's all about identity and the people's romance.
Posted by: Daniel Klein at Mar 28, 2007 10:49:58 AM
As soon as 2015, as late as 2025. I'd asked about the Singularity previously, and those dates coincide with estimates of the rise of computer intelligence to a human equivalent.
Posted by: anonymous coward at Mar 28, 2007 10:52:48 AM
Greed is widely condemned by society, to the point that those who are not greedy are condemned for achieving a large amount of wealth, whatever their intentions. Envy is barely mentioned, yet it is equivalent to greed at least in the eyes of the Catholic Church- and it fuels the taxation and redistribution of wealth. The libertarian future will not arrive until greed and envy are placed on equal footing.
Posted by: Matt at Mar 28, 2007 10:54:27 AM
Of course today's poor aren't rich enough for us to remove government aid.
And they never will be. No one's starving, or naked, or cold, or lacking cable TV now. What else do they physically need?
The more pressing problem is not their lack of physical comforts, but their lack of self-respect. The welfare state encourages terrible behaviour because it disconnects folks from the risk/reward and work/achieve paradigms. These paradigms are essential to good mental health: humans are tribal animals used to cooperating in small groups to achieve important goals. The welfare state gives the physical goals, but not the feeling of accomplishment by conducting the process. The welfare state will never be able to replicate this process, and it must go. Now.
[insert standard left-libertarian disclaimer about the corporations and MIC being the real welfare whores]
- Josh
Posted by: Wild Pegasus at Mar 28, 2007 10:56:25 AM
The cost of being destitute, at least in America, has progressively declined over the last century. I have always found America unique in that you can be homeless, and still be morbidly obese, or have a dog, or any number of strange things. Being a city dweller and living near public libraries for the last 5 years, I've had the luxury of befriending a few of the less fortunate "neighbours" of mine. I've come to find many aren't particularly discontent about their lot. In many ways their lives aren't so different, they spend their hours reading or on the web at the library, relax in the park, drink amongst friends, and usually put aside enough scratch to sleep at the shelter. In short, they live a life that most of us aspire to live in retirement, without any of the responsibility. It used to be if you were homeless, life was pretty swift and severe, you just died and that right soon. Not to say life is roses for the homeless by any means, but it's at least no longer a death sentence.
Posted by: Aschkan at Mar 28, 2007 11:05:19 AM
When nanotech comes of age, and when you can satisfy all your material needs for 40 cents a pound, only a small fringe will worry about the deprivations of the poor. There will even be equality in shoes and handbags at that point. Somewhere between 2030 and 2050.
Posted by: mobile at Mar 28, 2007 11:26:32 AM
I'd say between 2050 and 2100.
- Government programs for the not-poor (SS, Medicare, etc.) will face a turning-point first and will need to be phased out.
- New forms of private insurance will partly take their places and will become refined over time and therefore cheaper.
- Healthcare services will also become cheaper, through better technology (such as distance diagnosis and automated systems for record-sharing).
- With experience, the idea will then become both true and accepted that anyone of normal intelligence and normal health can earn enough to buy his/her own insurance for catastrophic health problems and can afford to pay out-of-pocket for regular healthcare services.
- More and more successful state-wide experiments with school vouchers will similarly bring about the acceptance of wholly private education funding.
- At the same time, private organizations will gradually step up funding for those incapable of working and their children.
Posted by: jp at Mar 28, 2007 11:30:10 AM
Libertarian freedom is possible now. When will it be economically efficient? Never: public goods, transaction costs, and the high value placed on equality are all facts of life. There will also always be investment projects that are so expensive that, realistically, only government can undertake them.
An intelligent government will always, ALWAYS have an advantage over a libertarian state.
Posted by: Robert at Mar 28, 2007 11:47:27 AM
Ironically, that day will be the same day that Marx's ideal of pure communism will
hold, in which, just to remind everybody, the state is to "wither away," and we shall
see "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need."
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Mar 28, 2007 11:48:41 AM
I second Kevin
Aschkan, do you live in San Francisco? It's REALLY REALLY different in other US cities, but your description sounds accurate for San Fran.
I suspect that post MNT there will still be a need for a (global) welfare state, but it will be easy to pay for it via the equal distribution of the heat dissipation global commons. No need for income tax, just tax heat production/energy consumption, which must be limited at some point to avoid massive direct (not greenhouse) global warming. Right vs. left might become conflict over how low the total heat consumption limits should be set, how bankruptcy should work, how much of nature should be preserved, and what sorts of limits, if any, should be placed on reproduction (if you can manufacture people, population can rise REAL FAST, and even without that ability some people with no economic limitations and superior health and life expectancy would double their populations faster than once (possibly faster than twice) every decade and transmit the desire to do so to their offspring).
see my paper here
http://wise-nano.org/w/Pollution_credits
Posted by: michael vassar at Mar 28, 2007 11:56:57 AM
As for Tyler's question, in 1890 I would have supported the existing system, which was pretty libertarian, and today I still support the existing system, which isn't. In 2040, if I'm alive, I expect to still support the existing system. Transaction costs for major shifts in policy are HUGE and increase the rents to political activity greatly, so they usually destroy much more wealth than they create.
OTOH, in 1890 I would have expected continuation of existing policies to create a society MUCH MUCH wealthier than that I see around me, and would have expected private charity to be sufficient to provide about today's 40th percentile standard of living for free to everyone in the US.
Posted by: michael vassar at Mar 28, 2007 12:02:19 PM
Hmm, I don't live in San Francisco, but possibly there is selection bias given that a homeless person who intentionally lives in close proximity to both a park and public library chooses to live a relatively higher quality of life than someone living under an overpass. Moreover, the level of community and also the acquisition of knowledge (even if from the public library) are two non-pecuniary aspects of life that are considered high value. However, I can certainly see how someone living on skid row in los angeles would not be of this nature.
Posted by: Aschkan at Mar 28, 2007 12:08:06 PM
> The poverty industry...
a.k.a. Big Poverty
Posted by: Christopher Monnier at Mar 28, 2007 12:21:56 PM
Macneil: Original Series Star Trek is capitalist. The Next Generation and the series after that is socialist. See http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/Trek-Marxism.html .
Posted by: Kaj Sotala at Mar 28, 2007 1:20:32 PM
I'm a 2007 libertarian.
I don't have the time (nor the intellectual firepower, in all likelihood) to delve into this too deeply, but I would dismantle the welfare state today on moral grounds alone.
When we think of welfare we almost reflexively think of those of limited means, though the government subsidizes the poorest of families and the richest of corporations, and anything in between. Just look at the latest "emergency" spending bill for the Iraq war.
If we were truly concerned about the most destitute and downtrodden, we could subsidize them for a fraction of the taxpayer's money that today goes toward federal and state funding of public education, health care, sports stadiums, guaranteed government loans, and every earmark to a special interest group under the sun. And I'd imagine we could provide such a safety net with relatively little opposition.
However, it seems that as we grow richer, the government accordingly recognizes the opportunity to enrich itself, seizing more and more tax revenue as a means to justify the adoption of more and more unnecessary and intrusive regulatory and subsidy programs.
In this light, it's hard to see how the continual expansion of government could in any way lead to greater liberty.
Ref:
http://bothwell.typepad.com/whos_your_nanny/2007/03/im_a_2007_liber.html
Posted by: Trevor at Mar 28, 2007 2:21:57 PM
I think Less Developed Countries all ought to be economic libertarians. After all, who are you going to redistribute from if everyone is poor? Clearly growth in new wealth matters much more for these countries than redistribution of "existing" (such as it is) wealth.
So, perversely, the richer a country gets due to economic liberty the more justifiable it gets, assuming it is justifiable at all, to have a government redistribution element.
However I don't buy the notion that government redistribution is compassionate and that the lack thereof isn't compassionate. Call it tough love if you will, but the welfare state adds in tons of perverse disincentives for the needy to act in their own self interest. Has there ever been a welfare state that didn't hurt the poor through moral hazard?
Ironically(?) the closest to a nonharmful (to the needy) welfare state that I can think of is the imaginary one that Milton Friedman came up with of a flat tax combined with a negative income tax, and abolishing all other government redistribution, but keeping general welafare spending such as defense, police, firefighting etc.
By the way, the notion that such a welfare state is nonharmful to the rest of the citizenry though is absurd since its taxation is taxing to the ability of job creators and innovators to do what they do best.
So I suppose I am a minarchist libertarian until Milton Friedman's ~1950 negative income tax idea. After ~1950 I become (not became, that occured circa 1990) a compromise libertarian, i.e. accepting the negative income tax as a preferable tradeoff vs the status quo redistribution state.
At what point do I become a non-compromise minarchist for developed countries? Probably after about a generation of institutional compromise libertarianism, after which time familial structure will be tenable enough again, as will personal savings habits.
Also I'll note that the best safety net is a dynamic job market due to gobs of well capitalized entrepreneurs, and that that state won't occur until the burden of taxation has lifted. Edison was born dirt poor, and yet grew to become a successful entrepreneur via personal savings. How did he manage to acquire those savings? It is massively easier when the government isn't taking your money here there and everywhere to begin with.
Posted by: happyjuggler0 at Mar 28, 2007 2:53:57 PM
We can eliminate food stamps when there are advertising-supported fast-food restaurants (you get a hamburger for free, as long as you're willing to eat it in front of a big screen running ads).
I predict that will happen in 2015.
Posted by: Gavin Andresen at Mar 28, 2007 2:59:04 PM
Well, according to Star Trek, it happens in 2063, after Zefram Cochrane flies a re-outfited nuclear missile at warp speeds and attracts the attention of the Vulcans, revolutionizing the way humans think about themselves and put aside all enmity and greed.
As Jesus said, "The poor you will always have with you." How poor is too poor? If the poor can be healthy, educated, and fed, perhaps they do not fit the description of poor. We know the poor are healthier, better educated, and better fed today than 50 years ago (at least within the United States).
It seems absurd to be able to put a date on when a current trend going one direction will have stopped and reversed and then receeded to a point that is acceptable, considering we're not entirely sure what acceptable would look like. Costs are going up. You can see the crest from here? Because I can't.
P.S. Is it sacreligious to quote Jesus and Star Trek at the same time?
Posted by: Allison at Mar 28, 2007 3:37:07 PM
Of course today's poor aren't rich enough for us to remove government aid.
Sure they are. If private methods can supply people with socks and food, they can also supply charitable aid. Just because the poor are (arguably) too poor to buy their own health care and education and housing and transportation and legal services and vacation time and retirement funds doesn't mean that they'll be best served by having those things provided by the government.
The time to demolish the welfare state was when it drew its first wretched breath.
Posted by: eddie at Mar 28, 2007 3:41:13 PM
The welfare state is well and truly demolished in a number of countries with lovely weather and energetic ways of resolving political disputes.
Unfortunately, I don't see many of the incredibly self-indulgent commenters here trading life in the US for life in Haiti / Somalia / Zimbabwe / Congo / Rwanda, etc.
The nice thing about living in a really wealthy nation is that we can afford to take a slice off of everyone's earnings so that elder poverty is a fraction of what is was in 1945, despite the elderly living much longer than they used to.
when will the welfare state end? when the US collapses into civil war.
Posted by: Francis at Mar 28, 2007 5:48:13 PM
I'm a liberal leftie forever. Because here in the US, it's not a welfare state so much as a safety net. As the correct part of John Goes' post points out, in Britain that bit goes back to the 1890s, and the need is still with us today. Misfortune and capitalism will always have their random bits. I don't see that going away. We are getting better at delivering the safety net, but I don't see it or the need going away.
John Goes said:
We did well enough before the welfare state, even during the revolutionary days of industry.
If by "we" you mean the middle class and above, then you're largely right. But the part of your "we" that would refer to the poor would be a great big BZZT. Time to reread your Dickens!
Independent George said:
the labor costs of healthcare become irrelevant the day we are able to move our brains into shiny new robot bodies
Speaking as an engineer...what makes you think robot bodies will be trouble-free? Same deal with uploads. Higher complexity is inextricably paired with higher bug rates. And higher complexity is implicit in superhuman AI.
mobile wrote:
When nanotech comes of age, and when you can satisfy all your material needs for 40 cents a pound, only a small fringe will worry about the deprivations of the poor.
Services are getting more expensive, a reflection of rising labor rates. Medicine and robot/avatar repair are both services. They'll still sock it to the budget plenty hard.
Posted by: Jon Kay at Mar 28, 2007 5:59:57 PM
Kevin:
So I thought I’d add a comment. Amartya Sen argues that as time goes on and we become richer, many of the new goods become required to live life effectively. So consider ...
That's the most insightful thing I've heard Sen say. (That's not saying much, of course.) Still,
he completely misdiagnoses the root problem. Take the car thing. There are still many places in
developed countries where you can live without a car. Why? The reason is a conscious decision by
voters to build the infrastructure that way in some places. And why do they do that? To get away from the unwashed
masses. And why do that? Because they're prevented from maintaining order in relation to them. (i.e.
not allowed to have the anti-crime and internal discrimination policies that would make co-existence tolerable).
So yes, it's possible that advanced societies can "pile on" the list of necessities, but it's hardly an emergent
result of that advancement.
Wild_Pegasus:
Much as a sympathize with I lot of left-libertarian anti-corporatism, in what sense are corporations
"the real welfare whores"? Sure, they get subsidies. Virtually all of them still pay net taxes (at
least, if you account for shareholder dividend/capital gains taxation). How many of the poor do?
Warning: I will laugh at claims that they're poor because they were denied access to hunting or farming
commons, or that such a denial is a "tax".
And what's MIC?
John_Kay: Dickens is *fiction*. Victorian conditions weren't rosy, but let's try to distinguish
reality from literature.
Posted by: Person at Mar 28, 2007 6:27:22 PM
"So I don't expect poverty to diminish even as per capital GDP rises. Quite the contrary."Per capita GDP and poverty are not always connected. Look at Equatorial Guinea. Second highest Per Capita GDP in the world, but most people there are poor as all hell.
Posted by: Milton Friedman at Mar 28, 2007 8:17:12 PM
Perhaps "libertarian" will seem like a quaint and distance notion in 2096.
Everyone today, reading this blog, thinks that women have the right to vote-- yet who hear identifies themselves as a "Suffragist"?
Indeed, in 2096 we might all be vegetarian Suffragist, libertarian, free-traders and each label will seem meaningless because we wouldn't even entertain holding any other view.
Posted by: Macneil at Mar 28, 2007 8:26:37 PM
51 years ago the minimum wage was $7.50/hr in today's dollars -- at 40% of today's per capita GDP. Were the American poor really much poorer, then, than the poor of de-unionized America, today -- I don't know. By 39 years ago the minimum wage was $9.50.
Posted by: Denis Drew at Mar 28, 2007 8:35:20 PM
An intelligent government will always, ALWAYS have an advantage over a libertarian state.
Such a being as an intelligent government has never and will never exist.
It's time to start dismantling the welfare state for both the poor and the "rich."
However, let's start with the rich. For example,
1) Public subsidization of sports facilities can end first;
2) Opportunities for CEOs to be paid $$multi-millions because they are adept at rent-seeking activities with federal and state elected folks can be ended next
3) End agricultural subsidies next.
The list on the high end can go on for quite a while.
When all that is done there may be a lot fewer folks in the poor category...
Posted by: Steve at Mar 28, 2007 8:51:01 PM
Steve, I am with you, and look forward to the benefits of removing corporate welfare trickling down to the rest of us.
However, I have more faith in government than you, as long as crooks and incompetents are not running it. I do believe that is possible, just not under a Republican administration.
As for a libertarian society, I am of the opinion that the movie Road Warrior is the most accurate depiction of such a society that I can think of. So I hope the answer to Tyler's question is 'never'.
Posted by: Nat at Mar 28, 2007 9:58:36 PM
Health care, maybe.
Education, no.
If agents discounted the utility of their descendents at the same rate as their own, then there would be no need for education. But they don't. And education leaves its greatest mark on kids before they're able to make rational economic decisions (or, at least, carry out these decisions). That's why we redistribute opportunity in America through public education. If people's education quality is based on their parents' income, it will involve inefficiencies to whatever degree that ability is not inherited - not to mention probably reducing education's efficacy as a signalling mechanism.
There are good economic reasons for universal public education, and the education system does not deny people liberty. If anything, it protects liberty.
Posted by: Mr. Noah at Mar 28, 2007 10:55:33 PM
As for a libertarian society, I am of the opinion that the movie Road Warrior is the most accurate depiction of such a society that I can think of.
It's important to distinguish between anarcho-capitalist libertarianism and minarchist libertarianism. Most libertarians are minarchists, not anarcho-capitalists. In other words, we see an ongoing need for government, but with its role limited to national defense, domestic peace-keeping, dispute resolution, and little else (about the precise contours of which there's disagreement). Unfortunately, a lot of people tend to view all libertarians as anarcho-capitalists.
Posted by: jp at Mar 28, 2007 11:07:04 PM
Won't the welfare state, at some point, simply become unnecessary?
What is "necessary"?
We have a welfare state not because it is necessary, but because the majority of citizens prefer to have a society where some attempt is made to alleviate the misery of poverty (whether to make themselves feel better about their wealth, or to reduce the chance that the lower echelons feel they would do better by destroying society is immaterial).
Since the misery of poverty is (at this point) mostly a matter of differential wealth (and that misery is built deep into the human genome), we're not going to see its disappearance any time soon.
So, I predict we'll see (in the general trend) more of a welfare state as we can afford more. Necessary? No. Desired by the people? Yes.
Posted by: Tom West at Mar 29, 2007 2:46:40 AM
Socialists are always going to call for more government at higher prices because it is in their vested interest. What better way to get a safer, higher paying government job than to build in a new layer of employees underneath what is currently in place? The poor are just an excuse for greater job security. If they were interested in providing better education, they would at least consider school vouchers to offer a choice of school districts. Instead the argument is that vouchers take money away where we should be giving more. That's genius. The worse you do the more funding you should receive.
Posted by: Roberts at Mar 29, 2007 9:58:45 AM
The simple answer is never, but not for reasons any libertarian would recognize.
The struggle over the distribution of income and wealth will continue as long as income and wealth are meaningful to humans.
One political party will struggle to redistribute income and wealth to the already rich, while the other party will strive to reverse that flow. Oh, politics is chaotic enough that that division will never be exact, and both (all) parties will nurture particular subgroups defined along other lines (farmers, doctors, investment bankers, hairdressers, landlords, whatever).
But, as long as the world is a risky place, wealthy people will have more insurance, and will want to get richer by selling their excess insurance at advantageous rates to poor people.
And, that's where libertarians come in: to pretend that is not an issue. To pretend, for example, that a noxious proposal to "reform" Social Security with private accounts is not an attempt to impoverish millions while enriching thousands.
The issue is everywhere in the economy, including socks. Poor people are regularly encouraged to buy poor quality cotton socks, which are very cheap, but wear out quickly. It is just one of many ways that we make it quite expensive to be very poor. But, hey let's repeal the minimum wage!
Posted by: Bruce Wilder at Mar 29, 2007 12:28:50 PM
Last Christmas my grandfather told me a story of a time during the Great Depression when he and his friends in rural Alabama were trying to earn enough money to buy some .22 bullets. They built a snare and soon trapped an opossum. They were bringing the 'possum to town to try and sell it when they happened upon a WPA road crew. My grandfather said he'd never forget the look in the eyes of some of those men staring at that 'possum. My grandfather was the tenth child of a sharecropper, but he told me that their family always had enough to eat because they owned a mule.
So anyway, that was poverty in 1936. Today, most households below the poverty line don't own a mule or eat 'possum, but they do have cable and are more likely than not to be overweight anyway. That's a big transformation, and it took just 70 years. That's why I believe health care and education will be far below the value of my grandfather's 'possum in 1936 by 2040. Heck, within 20 years most "health care" will be a pill delivering a drug "developed" by software. By 2080, the definition of a poor person will be someone who can't go wherever they want whenever they want to go.
Anyhoo, to comply with the requested format, I'm a 2040 Liberal Capitalist.
yours/
peter.
Posted by: peter jackson at Mar 30, 2007 12:28:34 AM
We will never be able to completely dismantle the Welfare state, until we stop feeling guilty for things that government cannot solve.
We can ALL afford socks now, or can at least assure ourselves that everyone can afford socks, because of the high level of automation in the clothing manufacture industry.
I agree with most of the the previous posts that automation will bring the price of both Health Care and Education down; it already has!!
Think of therapies that most of us consider common-place today; bandages and hygiene as part of first aid. Both were unknown in "western" culture less than 200 years ago, and yet how many people today will die from blood-poisoning due to a common infection? What about antibiotics? Don't get me started on the potential of stem cell therapy (Adult and non-embryonic stem cells, that is). The trend in Health Care that is having the biggest effect on our lives is PATIENT INVOLVEMENT!! Think wellness, think fitness trends, think, "WebMD"
I believe that the public schools unions boycott of the diversification of education choices cannot and will not last for much longer. Too much data has accumulated indicating that they they are wrong, with their lack of standards or accountability and multi-culti-wacked experiments. Technology such as the vast availability of KNOWLEDGE to everyone via the WWW and internet for free (or a small fee!) allows more and more people to educate themselves, IF they want it!
I would say that I'm a 2050 libertarian...If I'm not one already!
Posted by: cas6039 at Mar 30, 2007 5:15:59 PM
As data propagation becomes cheaper learning algorithms become more valuable. One could say that's been the entire goal of management software. Eliminating useless managers who just copied data to people and sucked tons of cash to do it.
Machines can calculate and copy way faster than some ex-QB who was in the right frat.
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Posted by: wslmwps at Aug 14, 2007 4:02:57 AM
There is some inequality of socks, but it seems that just about everybody -- even the poor -- "has enough." We don't even force people to buy socks for their kids. Might there come a time when health care and education fall under the same rubric?
Clearly not. Unlike socks, health care and education are insatiable demands. Few people want to die, regardless of their age; there is always demand to live longer.
Poor people today live far longer lives and are vastly better educated (most of them are literate) than poor people 200 years ago. That has only increased, rather than diminished, the complaints of indignity, inequality, and so on when it comes to health care and education for the poor.
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