UK Emergency Budget

[KrazyHorse]

My insult was based on the obvious fact that you're ignorant of basic mathematics as well as basic economics (yet feel the urge to comment on tax policy).

Yours is based on a mixture of jealousy and defensiveness.

Once more, I win.

[KrazyHorse]

Really, you have absolutely nothing worthwhile to contribute. You're both too stupid and too intellectually dishonest.

[ricketyclik]

My insult was based on the obvious fact that you're ignorant of basic mathematics as well as basic economics (yet feel the urge to comment on tax policy).

Yours is based on a mixture of jealousy and defensiveness.

Once more, I win.

Buck-toothed bandicoot.

[KrazyHorse]

Precisely

[Kuciwalker]

And the best way to help them is to buy their cheap **** at the store!

(it's true!)

Direct transfers may well be more effective.

[KrazyHorse]

You have to avoid rent-seeking though. Which is why I suggested some kind of blind transfer

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Also, I guarantee you that the vast majority of people in that lowest income decile don't sit in that decile for most of their lives...

I guarantee that the vast majority of inhabitants of most deciles don't remain in that particular decile for the 30+ years it would take to consitute "most of their lives". However I'd strongly suspect that the deciles with the least mobility are the bottom and the top.

Individual income mobility is generally a lot higher than that.

For example, many of the lowest decile are likely to be students. Others are temporarily unemployed, and have savings or family to support them.

Only a very small number will persistently have such low income.

Students always skew it, but bear in mind that we have 2 million registered unemployed, around the same number on incapacity benefit, and around 1.5 million pensioners who get only state benefits. You could argue the unemployed are transient (but expect challenges, especially where North England is concerned), but the disabled and pensioners aren't. And then you get the full-time carers.

Britain is lagging behind other developed nations on social mobility-

http://cep.lse.ac.uk/centrepiece/v10i1/blanden.pdf

And even when that's all said and done, I'm still 80 million light years away from being convinced that a budget that shifts the burden disproportionately onto the very poorest is fair, or wise.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

So you admit that you should be agitating for more foreign aid rather than to stop a bunch of temporarily unemployed/student Britons from losing a small fraction of their standard of living?

I'm all for more foreign aid, proportionately financed according to size of disposable income.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

So I want to help the poor, and therefore must want to devote my personal resources to doing it. You, on the other hand, want to help the rich, but you want to do so via government transfer payments.

How much are you actually giving to the poor?

[Kuciwalker]

Almost nothing, given the size of the US foreign aid budget

[Kuciwalker]

And even when that's all said and done, I'm still 80 million light years away from being convinced that a budget that shifts the burden disproportionately onto the very poorest is fair, or wise.

None of the burden of this budget is on the very poorest. All of it is falling on people who are incredibly wealthy.

[Kuciwalker]

Laz is proud of the moral superiority he gets from, at one point in his life, having been only in the top 20% by standard of living. At some point he may even have felt hungry. But luckily, whenever he did have some cash he could just walk or ride a bus to the store, which would always have food - always! He had a roof over his head. He had constant access to clean water. He didn't have to worry about malaria, he didn't have AIDS, diarrhea was something annoying, not a deadly threat. If he did get a serious illness he had free medical care available! He didn't live in a war zone. He wasn't too likely to be murdered or robbed. If his house or apartment set on fire, people would come quickly with modern equipment to put out the fire. Because he experienced this trying time, he feels like people going through it now deserve massive financial assistance, that helping these people is an important priority for his country.

And because I haven't experienced that, I really should, because it would give me perspective.

[Kuciwalker]

It bears mentioning that one more extremely effective way to improve the living conditions of the poor is for the rich countries to adopt open immigration policies.

[Jon Miller]

I am in favor of open immigration (in the US at least), and I give 1000+ dollars a year to charity (out of a gross income of ~20000).

However, maintaining social nets and helping the relative poor (including by not placing heavy burdens on them) in first world countries is a key component of quality of life (which should be a goal of the country, which is suppose to reflect the will of it's citizens, which are mostly made of the relatively poor) and is also a key component is allowing social mobility.

While a person in a first world country is certainly richer than most of the third world even if they have to work for food and can't go to school, it still means that they are lacking social mobility and the ability to realize their potential as human capital.

Which is required for an efficient use of labor.

JM

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

None of the burden of this budget is on the very poorest. All of it is falling on people who are incredibly wealthy.

Sophistry. Where do the western world's poor get their goats and subsistence farms to emulate the 3rd World peasant state you're currently sporting such a bulging erection for, Trust Fund Boy?

Laz is proud of the moral superiority he gets from, at one point in his life, having been only in the top 20% by standard of living.

Strictly speaking, I get it from having been considerably poorer than you. That's just the moral superiority- we'll gloss over all that sex appeal stuff because it's not immediately relevant.

Now explain again why you think it's better that the burden of funding the world's poor falls disproportionately on the developed world's poor, compared to the developeed world's rich. Without resorting to more sophistry or I'll just start making fun of you.