On Fri, 17 Aug 2012, Alex Hutton <highspeeddub@gmail.com> wrote:
On 17 August 2012 19:52, Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au> wrote:
That seems a good summary, welfare helps the economy and has been proven to do so for 170 years. The libertarian thing is like a cult, it's clearly not working well for the US, apart from the 1%.
The cost of adfministering welfare, as well as the inevitable mistakes made by a centrally planned system, require that the welfare state takes more wealth than it gives.
No-one is suggesting that paying welfare magically creates money from nothing. What it does is provide a safety net. One benefit of this is that it allows people to take risks such as accepting a job offer at a small company. Back in the days when there was no welfare or health care people wanted a job for life, that really prevented anyone other than the independently wealthy from starting a company. Another is that in modern developed countries people just don't believe that orphans should be beggars or prostitutes.
I don't know why you bring up Germany. They seem to have had a few troubles over the past 170 years.
Not related to welfare though.
You could instead look at Sweden and how detrimental it has been for them to move to a welfare state http://mises.org/daily/2259 .
Please cite a reputable source.
Actually it's efficient to provide some security for the citizens. That encourages people to take financial risks instead of focussing on health care as they do in the US.
But in the USA there is generally a greater degree of entrepreneurship and financial risk taking than in Australia. That is despite the USA's inefficient socialist health system.
Your problem here is that you blindly believe American propaganda. Please investigate what the word "socialist" means and then investigate how the US health care system works. Both of them differ from what the tea- baggers believe.
Individual refugees aren't necessarily going to be net takers from the welfare state, but, in general, any population increase is going to increase the burden on the welfare state.
Actually you want the population to remain about the same so that there are young people to take care of you when you are old. The Chinese one child policy is putting the future of old people at risk, as would the Australian birth rate if we didn't have immigration. I've already provided this data, you really should read previous messages before replying.
Why should any particular degree of population growth be wanted? Allow the population to grow as it will and allow the population to take care of itself as it will.
That's not what you do when running a country. Companies want employees and customers and they want a government policy that supports that. Citizens want an effective government that runs things well, when there aren't locals with the necessary skills they want migrants to be allowed in to do the work. Also citizens want a reasonably low crime rate. The cheapest way of doing this is to provide some level of welfare. Your problem is that you are more interested in ideology than in how things actually work.
The more people taking from the welfare state, the more the welfare state must take from everyone else.
And
if it isn't overtly taking money in greater taxes it must exert greater control over people's activities to ensure that what is extracted from
the
welfare state is less than what is contributed to it .
You might want to compare "corporate welfare" with welfare paid to people.
Corporate welfare is obviously just as bad as any other form of welfare.
Except that your crowd support it. http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-ausintro.htm The above URL has a summary of Austrian "economics". Note that your mises.org site is sponsored by the Koch brothers who almost entirely live off corporate welfare. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/