From: drw@banach.mit.edu (Dale R. Worley)
Subject: Re: Hypothetically speaking
Organization: MIT Dept. of Tetrapilotomy, Cambridge, MA, USA
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 19:35:57 GMT

Unfortunately, this article hasn't generated much commentary:

In article <MAD.92Nov4171117@spirit.clearpoint.com> mad@spirit.clearpoint.com (Michael Davis) writes:
   Given that you have awakened in an alternate universe which is
   identical to the current one except that the government (if any) of
   the US has been replaced by one for which you were the sole architect.
   There are thousands of starving people and even employed people can't
   always make enough to avoid homelessness.  What do you do about the
   plight of the poor, And why?  (Insert smileys as needed.)

   (A) F*** 'em.  If they can't manage to get themselves a decent
   education or start their own business, they don't deserve to eat.

   (2) Decide that making sure that everyone has enough food is more
   important than some rich (wo)man's bank account, and give them bread and
   circuses.

   (e) Print money and distribute as needed.

   (D) none of the above, rather________________________________

Well, printing money is pretty hopeless, because it would generate
enormous inflation, and money would become nearly worthless.  (See the
part in the Hitchhiker's Guide when people decide to use leaves for
money, because there are so many leaves that everybody will be rich.)

"Fuck 'em" is a workable solution, but it's pretty nasty and ugly.

"Give them bread and circuses" is much more pleasant in the short run,
but tends to lead to social rot (chronic unemployment) over the long
run.

Perhaps a better approach would be to train the unemployed to be as
productive as you can make them be.  Certainly, some people have
various disabilities that render them truly unemployable under any
circumstances, but most of the chronically unemployed *could* be
productive workers.  The U.S. has the problem that publically-funded
training becomes pretty much unavailable once one gets beyond the
usual school age.  Unfortunately, it's about age 25 when people start
to realize that they have no job skills and better do something about
it.  Also, the mechanisms for *forcing* people to get job skills in
school are poor -- the more conformist cultures of Germany and Japan
tend to enforce education much more than the individualist culture of
the U.S.  So it's easier to drift through school learning nothing, or
to drop out entirely.

As far as I have read, job-training programs that address all of the
interlocking problems of people without job skills (education, child
care, medical insurance, social skill training, counseling) work
rather well.  The two problems with such programs is that they are
expensive (in the short run) and they run into resistance from people
already employed in the fields for which training is being given.

Perhaps an improved way to do this would be to allow people to borrow
money to finance training.  There is good evidence that this is
economically advantageous for all concerned (because the rate of
return on job skill investment is higher than on financial
investment), and it could be used as a mechanism to allow the
development of a rich industry of job-training programs.

   I reserve my own answer until some future date.  Do you think it's
   true that "a society is judged by how it treats its least well off
   members."  (Paraphrased and source forgotten.)  Or should society just
   be a handmaiden to the creation of wealth?

Well, if we judge a society only on how it treats its least well off,
we are likely to become a "socialist paradise" where we are all poor
together.  On the other hand, just supporting wealth creation is a
little too heartless.  I *think* it's possible to support the poor at
a humane level of existance without reducing incentives to the point
that people don't work hard.

Sociologically, people in the U.S. have a very low level of belief in
the idea that a purpose of government is to promote equality of
wealth.  This is also quite pronounced in immigrants -- the top reason
for given by immigrants for immigrating is "opportunity", which when
questioned they reveal means "opportunity to make a *lot* of money".

Dale

Dale Worley		Dept. of Math., MIT		drw@math.mit.edu
--
Spinoza is the noblest and most lovable of the great philosophers.
Intellectually, some others have surpassed him, but ethically he is
supreme.  As a consequence, he was considered, during his lifetime and
for a century after his death, a man of appalling wickedness.
-- Bertrand Russell