Why doesn't the gov't legislate what people buy with food stamps?

[Al B. Sure!]

I never said they were entitled! Like I said, the issue here is whether the purchasing decisions people make are currently optimal, or if they are making the "wrong" choice. I think the most qualified person to appraise the value of food is the person who will be eating it because things like taste are so subjective. I think people who buy junk food do it because the taste offsets the health effects and I think telling people that the government is more qualified than they are to decide what to put into their bodies is paternalism. Paternalism is good when dealing with children, but not adults.

Taste offsets the health effects...

You all are assuming that these people are rational agents making decisions under conditions of information.

[Al B. Sure!]

Since no one is proposing a return to malthus for the lower classes, its probably better they be kept fat, tranquil and infertile.

Say what? Can someone find the statistics... I'm pretty sure income and number of children are negatively correlated.

[Heraclitus]

It might make sense to have a special class of food stamps for families, and require people to buy food that is deemed "healthy" with them, if your argument is that people should teach their kids to eat healthy.

I have grave misgivings what would be considered healthy, the goverment would **** it up.


You are also clearly ignoring how a diet can be perfectly healthy for someone and make someone else obese.



And even if on average it would do what the policy is supposed to do there would be cases where the one size fits would push people towards (for them) unhealty habits. I guess the dificulty of implementation would depend on how homogenus the underclass is.

[Heraclitus]

Say what? Can someone find the statistics... I'm pretty sure income and number of children are negatively correlated.

Relatively infertile.

Income is negativley correlated to feritlity. But if we adopted your proposed policy and it worked the underclass would be more fertile (less infertile) than it is now while the upper class would be unaffected.


Also obese people have less sex. Best case scenario with your adopted policy expenses for contraception rise.
But consistently using contraception is more or less out of reach for those with IQ's below 90, we would probably see more abortions and more poor kids.

[KrazyHorse]

How so? I mean I get how it's different from a logistically standpoint but... you give Section 8 housing to someone who then promptly turns it into a drug house.

How so?

Are you ****ing serious?

If I say "I'm going to give 1000$ to all albinos" vs "I'm going to give anybody who wants it a voucher for 1000$ of anti-albino treatment" then in both cases only albinos will benefit directly, and all albinos will benefit (let's assume that all albinos want anti-albino treatment, but place different values on it). What is different in the two cases is that some albinos value the albino treatment at less than 1000$. If I had given them the money directly, some would have used it for treatment and some would have used it to go drinking or buy fetish gear. The cost to the government would have been the same, but the benefit to the albinos is higher when they get money.

Suppose instead, the government only gives food stamps to those who will buy appropriate food (ie- by setting restrictions on what can be bought... people make a choice to elect to receive stamps... therefore, if they are willing to accept those restrictions to receive benefits, then you're effectively placing a restriction on which people actually get aid and not quite on just what they do with it). My point is there's little difference between the two.

In this hypothetical, the government is NOT restricting who the benefits flow to. The demand for free **** is INFINITE. Giving up drug dealing has costs which make the population of drug dealers far less elastic than the population of people who are willing to purchase whatever food the government restricts them to.

Please do try to keep this straight.

[KrazyHorse]

The deadweight cost of a subsidy/tax at an inelastic margin is 0. The deadweight cost of a subsidy/tax at an infinitely elastic margin is infinite.

These are simple concepts...

[Al B. Sure!]

KH:

Your $1000 stipend to Albinos would not be effective if the government's goal with the subsidy is to provide treatment for albinos. The voucher you mentioned (by controlling where the money goes) allows for social policy to be effective.

The government wants to increase the number of low emission cars on the road... Does it give tax breaks to everyone who buys a car or just people that buy low emission vehicles?

[Heraclitus]

The deadweight cost of a subsidy/tax at an inelastic margin is 0. The deadweight cost of a subsidy/tax at an infinitely elastic margin is infinite.

These are simple concepts...

People lack these simple concepts. Explaining them does people good.


Remember when you debated me on immigration? I had not made the mental connect to free trade even though it should have been obvious, I wasn't thinking clearly on the issue, heck looking back I didn't even understand the free trade argument properly.

I've spent a lot of time since then trying to learn what I could on basic economics, its cleared up many things immensley. I find it horribly frustrating that the Slovenian system dosen't include Economics in general High schools, while having Psychology, Sociology and Philosophy, one of these could easily be dumped, but then fever morons would pass and the craziness of a third of them enrolling to university (education is a magic panacea in the minds of the public) would be somewhat reduced.

[KrazyHorse]

Who the **** said that my goal was to get albinos treatment? My goal was to HELP ALBINOS.

Just like my goal in supporting redistributive programs is to HELP POOR PEOPLE.

I think poor people know what they value (in other words, what they want/need) better than I do, so I want to transfer money to them, because the transactional costs of getting what they value with money are as low as possible.

[Heraclitus]

People have mixed up toughts on the welfare state. They understand it as a kind of correction program that should ideally turn poor people into middle class folk (since all people are blank slates at birth and can become anything they want).


So fundamentally they don't see it as helping poor people living in acordance with their values, they see it as helping enlighten the poor people to accept their own values.

[Al B. Sure!]

Heraclitus:

People lack these simple concepts. Explaining them does people good.

I understand what KH is saying about deadweight cost. I minored in Economics. I just don't give a crap

[Heraclitus]

Heraclitus:

I understand what KH is saying about deadweight cost. I minored in Economics. I just don't give a crap

Oh ok.

He's jolly fun to troll but he bites.

[KrazyHorse]

You majored in sucking at reasoning, apparently.

Filosofy, I believe they call it.

[KrazyHorse]

Oh ok.

He's jolly fun to troll but he bites.

Hera, sweetie, you've never managed to troll me. And Albert is just a fairly low-quality thinker (even worse than you). Not trolling.

[Al B. Sure!]

Finance... but yeah. still sucking at reasoning. Won't argue with that one there.