What Do You Think Is The Best Economic System

[Squilliam]

HappySqurriel said:

Squilliam said:

HappySqurriel said:

Rath said:

 I think you guys are missing the point of welfare. It's meant to guarantee that somebody, even if they can't find work, will be able to live without becoming a criminal.

Yes there are negative consequences such as dole bludgers but you are acting as if its immediately possible for everybody to immediately find work at all times, that's simply not the case in the real world.

 

Unemployment insurance is designed to ensure that people who find themselves out of work can survive while they look for work ... Welfare is a misguided effort of the government to get into the charity business

Actually if everyone had retirement savings they wouldn't need welfare except for people who had never worked. Its a greater incentive to find work if you're spending your own money whilst you haven't got a job. In addition to this, in times of recession it reduces the money supply as people withdraw money from their savings to pay for the cost of living. A pretty good economic reason too, IMO.

While I agree with you in principle, unemployment insurance and social security (while currently very poorly managed) do have value; and enough people see value in these services that they could be privatized. Welfare (on the other hand) is a form of charity.

The idea of insurance is to cover people for financial losses which are well outside of their normal ability to cope. In the case of house or car insurance where your liability may exceed several hundred thousand dollars insurance makes sense. In the case of job losses I believe that the losses in most cases are not larger than what most people ought to be able to cope with. In most cases the liability is limited to less than $5,000 so therefore people ought to cover it themselves. Any insurance ought to be in terms of liability greater than that as it prevents people from taking a poor incentive to milk the system.

Say If savings then first draw up to $5000 of funds, then after that if no job found either insurance or social welfare covers until job found.

A private enterprise has just as many problems as a public entity once the size of the organization gets too large. The best performing companies aren't the behemoth Microsofts, they are the nimble and agile Nintendos and Apples of this world. Theres really no such thing as a smart agile welfare company out there, and one such will simply face the same dillemma that the public enterprises did in terms of how they deliver the service.