Re: OT: Why welfare doesn't work!

On Sep 10, 1:00 am, Joerg <notthisjoerg...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
bill.slo...@xxxxxxxx wrote:
On Sep 9, 12:00 am,Joerg<notthisjoerg...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
bill.slo...@xxxxxxxx wrote:
On Sep 8, 2:19 am,Joerg<notthisjoerg...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
bill.slo...@xxxxxxxx wrote:
On Sep 7, 5:46 am,Joerg<notthisjoerg...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
bill.slo...@xxxxxxxx wrote:
On Sep 6, 3:54 pm, "Jon Slaughter" <Jon_Slaugh...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Does this argument make sense? (cause a friend of mine seems not to think
so)
The fact that kids who's parents that "live" on welfare also end up "living"
on welfare verses the kids who's parents do not live on welfare prove that
welfare does not work in getting people off welfare.
The US system of giving parents inadequate welfare, so their kids
don't live well enough to be able to do well at school is indeed a
foolish system.
European welfare is pitched that little bit higher and seems to avoid
this particular pitfall.
Yeah, right. I've heard kids openly say "Why should I apply for a job?
Then I have to pay taxes and I get more money from welfare anyway."
That was in the country where you now live, and the very reason why I
left that country.
[...]
I can't say much about the Netherlands - though a kid who can't get a
job is very likely to claim that they prefer to live on welfare,
rather than admit that they can't persuade anybody to hire them.
I can say more about poverty inMelbournein the late 1960's where the
MelbourneUniversity Economics department did a huge and detailed
poverty survey whch they then analysed with the university's shiny new
IBM 7040/44 computer. For a while I was going out with one of the
researchers and took her to a graduate student party where one of the
duller right wing students made pretty much the same claim that you've
just made,and I greatly enjoyed watching her take him to pieces on the
basis of the survey results, which she knew intimately.
I've seen some of those "studies". What I see with my own eyes and hear
with my own ears has much greater importance to me than those.
So you are working with a small and unrepresentative data set.
No. My impression was that their studies were small and
unrepresentative. Stop reading so much paper which often has an agenda
tacked on to it and talk to people instead. In this case for example
social workers.

Whose studies were small and unrepresentative? Whoever you may think
you are talking about it seems unlikely that it would be as small and
unrepresentative as the sample you get to help via your church.

I believe in individual help and I am a firm believer that churches,
non-profits and people are much more effective than any government could
ever be.

TheMelbournepoverty survey I was referrring to

http://assda.anu.edu.au/studies/D0481.html

Needs registration to get any data.

It's forty years old. What's the data worth these days. There will be
more recent surveys, more relevant to Jon Slaughter's
misapprehensions.

covered 5843 "income units" and the sampling scheme was designed to
make sure that the samples were representative. If there was any
agenda attached, it would seem to have been to provide objective data
for Australian judges and legislators.

http://www.sprc.unsw.edu.au/dp/dp084.pdf

No data, only conclusions. I trust that the underlying data exists and
is sound but I disagree with some of the statements or things they
assume as facts. For instance:

Table 1: "Not having enough money to make ends meet". Did anybody ever
sit down with the folks and drill down expense over three or more
months? That, and nothing short of that, is the only way to find out
whether their financial discipline is sound. In the cases I am familiar
with it never was. Not once. Soccer club dues, gym memberships, cable TV
fees, unnecessary phone features, daily coffee shop visit, buying at
elevated convenience store prices, and so on. Tons and tons of
discretionary Dollars flying out the window. When I told people that we
have none of that they stared at me with wide eyes.

I don't know about the full survey. My friend worked on the pilot
study and was one of the interviewers who did in depth interviews with
a - much smaller - number of families to work out the an appropriate
set of questions for the full-scale survey, for which they needed many
more interviewers who could not have the same in-depth undertanding of
what was being looked for.

One has to ask "Why is person A able to make ends meet and person B with
on the same budget is not?", and then _personally_ help them. That
second part is always missing in these big government studies.

This wasn't a government study. The second url I posted

http://www.sprc.unsw.edu.au/dp/dp084.pdf

does point out that this was university study largely funded by
contributions from non-government sources (including some of Professor
Henderson's own money).

Basically, people fell into poverty in Melbourneat that time because
something went wrong - usually medical - which pulled them out of
work, and they had considerable difficulty getting back into work if
they didn't skills that were in heavy demand. Employers preferred to
hire youngsters -because they were cheaper and more biddable, and we
frightened of hiring adults who had had to drop out of work - for
whatever reason - for fear that it might happen again.
Then the country must have a problem that prevents people from starting
self-employed. I've heard about some of the problems such as large
financial import burdens from Australian engineers.
In order to start up your own business you almost always need a
certain amount of capital and you do need to know enough potential
customers to give you enough business to pay the fixed charges (like
food for you and your family). People in that sort of situation don't
often show up in a poverty survey.
In America that's different. I know a lot of people who barely owned the
shirt on their back but made it. Some of them made it big.

Anecdotal evidence isn't a good basis for social engineering.

I am of a very different opinion. Nothing beats personal experience.

For emphasising specific problems and missing out on others that
personal experience didn't include. The Fabians got this right at the
turn of the last century.
You could learn from them, but your politics do blinker you.

Doing large studies and no personal follow up, along the lines of "Yup,
these folks are poor, now we have proof, now let's move on" does not cut
it. Not at all.

As you will be assured by any academic working in the area. Don't
teach your grandmother to suck eggs.

The only-hire-youngsters strategy is also very prevalent in Europe.
Rather short sighted since they don't have the experience.
Personnel departments don't understand experience but they do
understand qualifications.
They often do not understand which qualifications are really important..
For example that a nice acedemic title or super grades are no guarantee
that the candidate can really design them X gizmo.

Too true. My Ph.D. in Chemistry is no guarantee that I can design
electronic circuits, so I probably should never have got the jobs that
let me prove that I could.

Some of the best circuit designers I worked with have no degree at all.

And a 1960's degree could be distinctly unhelpful. One of my
colleagues in Luton in the early 1970's was the son of a lecturere in
electronics at the local college of technology. The father's lectures
on electronics referred only to valve circuits - though planar
transistors had been around for some ten years by then - and covered
transistors in a single lecture which explained that transistors were
like valeves with leaky grids.

The son distinguished himself by designing a bistable that blew up
when you turned it on - he didn't appreciate that the base-emitter
junction of a planar transistor couldn't take more than 5V of reverse
voltage without blowing up.

Since the son was an arrogant know-it-all who made a habit of being
rude about other people's slip-ups, the whole lab got to hear about
it.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
.