"if your job can be done more cheaply without you, and the only reason you have it is because people would feel sorry for you if you didn’t, so the government forces your company to keep you on – well then, it’s not a job. It’s a welfare program that requires you to work 9 to 5 before seeing your welfare check."
'With all these advantages of “Simple Check”, what exactly is the “Sneaky Job” condition good for that makes it so popular? As far as I can tell, it is good for fooling people. People do not like paying welfare.'
> People do not like paying welfare.
We should work on fighting this perception. Welfare is actually good.
There was a time in the past ('30s-'70s) when welfare wasn't a bad word. People liked the idea of welfare. It was a positive idea.
That we're still all talking like this, like welfare is a handout to worthless losers, etc is a testament to the success of Reaganite conservative politics. We all talk like Gordon Gekko now.
We should rehabilitate the word and the idea.
Say it with me:
WELFARE IS GOOD AND COOL.
[1] http://wol.iza.org/articles/unemployment-and-happiness.pdf
It's worth reading the paper past the initial TL;DR bullet points. It goes into interesting discussion about what exactly it is about unemployment that makes people unhappy. Some quotes from the middle of the article:
"There is plenty of evidence in support of the hypothesis that the evaluative component of well-being depends on how much one conforms to or deviates from the norms of the social group one associates with. For unemployment, this means that the harmful effect of unemployment on life satisfaction is larger the stronger the prevailing norm toward work is. (...)
There is additional evidence in support of the importance of social norms to the degree of life satisfaction of people who are unemployed. A German study finds that unemployed people report a substantial increase in life satisfaction when they retire, although other life circumstances remain largely unchanged [10]. The study interprets retirement as a switch in the social group with which one identifies, from the working-age population to retirees, and thus to a change in the social work norm. Once an individual has retired, not working no longer violates the social work norm, and life satisfaction consequently increases. (...)
The potential felt scarcities and worries associated with unemployment are manifold. They include fewer social contacts, less social recognition, less money, a less structured day, less control of one’s life, and less certainty about what the future will bring. Indeed, although the effect on happiness of temporary income reductions during unemployment is not very large, people who are unemployed worry about their future economic uncertainty."
--
I think it's still possible that unemployeds' unhappiness is caused by the work-centric culture and economy. Being shoveled money at is problematic, because you're getting for free what society expects you to get by work. Consider the ultimate welfare we all get - sunlight, breathable air. No one feels inadequate or sad because they're receiving it for free. It's part of the environment. We assume air and sun are always there, will always be there, and are available to everyone without having to work for it. I think food and shelter are things we should actually try and push to the environmental level, i.e. have it available for free and to everyone, unconditionally.
Yes, this is critical. There is much stigmatization of nonwork. As we automate away more jobs, (as we should!) there will be less and less work to go around, and eventually not enough work for everybody who wants it. We might already be there.
I agree that people get more out of work than money, but that's not really the question (and also what if your job sucks? I'd rather have money and no job than money and a terrible job). The question is what do we do about the people for whom there is no job? Right now what happens? There's always roaming around San Francisco panhandling I guess. Or crime. It's not a coincidence that societies with robust welfare states have far lower crime and low or no homeless.
I'm all for people working if they want, but "Get a job" isn't a real solution for a destitute person, or even for the working poor who already have a couple of jobs and are still broke. Or even really for somebody with a job he'd rather quit.
There have been some good discussions on HN around basic income, too. I think that would be an even better solution, really.
Anecdote: I've used welfare before and although having "cash shoveled at me" didn't automatically make me happier, it did make it much easier to pay for food while I was in school with a garbage side job. I certainly wouldn't have been happier without it.