No, the whole idea of deserving and undeserving is absurd. You can be with someone 24/7 and not know what they are going through that prevents them from working. Ok, SOMETIMES you know there's no reason but in most cases you just don't know. Sometimes people act like they are gaming the system because it's more embarrassing to admit you …
No, the whole idea of deserving and undeserving is absurd. You can be with someone 24/7 and not know what they are going through that prevents them from working. Ok, SOMETIMES you know there's no reason but in most cases you just don't know. Sometimes people act like they are gaming the system because it's more embarrassing to admit you aren't physically/mentally able to anything more.
The best we can do is set criteria as well as possible. Local control isn't much if any better. Without good criteria, each "local" decision-maker will decide differently, especially when spending someone else's money, which is almost always the case.
Mormons probably do it the best but there's still a federal benefit system backing them up.
It seems to me that the idea is actually quite logical and simple. It starts from the moral judgment that it is wrong to take support from other people if you can support yourself. To the extent that you do that, you are undeserving. Of course, "able to support yourself" is situation-specific. A lot of people who were able to support themselves in 1928 were unable in 1932.
There are going to be practical questions in any actual system of assistance to the "deserving." Like, under what circumstances can a person get assistance even if they have refused a job because "it's not in my field" or "that's way less than I used to make"?
Knowledge problems are always problems. A system of only helping the "deserving" largely deals with that by putting the burden of proof on the person asking for assistance. Olasky talks about people being given an ax and told to go outback and split the firewood for tonight. If they refused, they were not given entry into the shelter.
'Absurd' is going way too far. Sure, there is a lot of fuzziness in the spectrum of culpability one bears for one's own misfortune, and it's not always easy for an outside observer to tell clearly and precisely, but the law deals with those issues all the time in a wide variety of circumstances where those determinations are at the very heart of questions of who has what amount of liability to whom, who has excuses, defenses, mitigating circumstances, and so forth.
The guy who paid his insurance premiums and lost his house in a fire caused by a bolt of lightning deserves the payout. The arsonist fire-bug who burned it down on purpose does not. The guy who passed out while reading and smoking and unintentionally dropped his lit cigarette on his newspaper and barely escaped with his life is an arguable case, but to treat all these different situations as if they are the same and wouldn't benefit from the application of discerning sound judgment is what would actually be absurd.
How do you know the guy smoking and says he fell asleep wasn't a fire bug?
The person who can't work because of back pain, how do you know? The person with migraines, how do you know? Are you certain the person addicted to painkillers, alcohol, etc. should not? What about the schizophrenic, depressed, or agoraphobic? YOU DONT KNOW.
But decisions like that are made all the time. Do you really have debilitating back pain? If you do, you get Social Security Disability or, if you're a municipal employee, perhaps the local government's budget pays you for as long as you're disabled. There are always stories of the guy out on total disability who is spotted playing 18 holes of golf and carrying his own clubs. The decision-maker was wrong. But that is no reason to throw up your hands and say, "I don't know. Give everyone disability."
Maybe I misunderstood you. I see determining who should get benefits as very different from who is deserving. For benefits, we have criteria to make decisions as objectively as reasonably possible. We hope it gives the right answers but know it often doesn't. Knowing who is deserving is a completely different question. And while determining disability may be correlated with deserving, other forms of benefits are determined by work status, income, family structure, etc. that have little or no correlation to deserving. If I turn down a higher paying job I hate in order to work a minimum wage job I like and it qualifies me for benefits, am I deserving? Doesn't matter for determining benefits.
Most days I have low grade back pain and discomfort that hinders me very little. A sizable minority of days I don't notice it. I had one two week period (which delayed a ski trip I successfully completed) and a few other random days where I'm incapacitated. What if it were the other way around and I had 5 good days a year? Do you still know anything about my ability to work from seeing me play golf and carry the bag?
What I am trying to say is that determining who is eligible and who is deserving have the same sort of knowledge problems: do you have a second job you're not telling me about? side gigs? do you get paid "under the table"? how many people really live with you?
Or to take your example, is that day of golfing a normal thing or just something you were able to do one unusual day? Determining disability has criteria that are supposed to "make decisions as objectively as reasonably possible" but, as you say, often the decisions are wrong.
Now, as I see it, the decision about who is deserving is a moral one on which lots of people differ but decisions on eligibility are supposed to made on the basis of rules that have already been determined. The various moral arguments about who should get what benefits are one step back. They have already been weighed and decisions about the appropriate criteria have been made.
No, the whole idea of deserving and undeserving is absurd. You can be with someone 24/7 and not know what they are going through that prevents them from working. Ok, SOMETIMES you know there's no reason but in most cases you just don't know. Sometimes people act like they are gaming the system because it's more embarrassing to admit you aren't physically/mentally able to anything more.
The best we can do is set criteria as well as possible. Local control isn't much if any better. Without good criteria, each "local" decision-maker will decide differently, especially when spending someone else's money, which is almost always the case.
Mormons probably do it the best but there's still a federal benefit system backing them up.
It seems to me that the idea is actually quite logical and simple. It starts from the moral judgment that it is wrong to take support from other people if you can support yourself. To the extent that you do that, you are undeserving. Of course, "able to support yourself" is situation-specific. A lot of people who were able to support themselves in 1928 were unable in 1932.
There are going to be practical questions in any actual system of assistance to the "deserving." Like, under what circumstances can a person get assistance even if they have refused a job because "it's not in my field" or "that's way less than I used to make"?
Knowledge problems are always problems. A system of only helping the "deserving" largely deals with that by putting the burden of proof on the person asking for assistance. Olasky talks about people being given an ax and told to go outback and split the firewood for tonight. If they refused, they were not given entry into the shelter.
'Absurd' is going way too far. Sure, there is a lot of fuzziness in the spectrum of culpability one bears for one's own misfortune, and it's not always easy for an outside observer to tell clearly and precisely, but the law deals with those issues all the time in a wide variety of circumstances where those determinations are at the very heart of questions of who has what amount of liability to whom, who has excuses, defenses, mitigating circumstances, and so forth.
The guy who paid his insurance premiums and lost his house in a fire caused by a bolt of lightning deserves the payout. The arsonist fire-bug who burned it down on purpose does not. The guy who passed out while reading and smoking and unintentionally dropped his lit cigarette on his newspaper and barely escaped with his life is an arguable case, but to treat all these different situations as if they are the same and wouldn't benefit from the application of discerning sound judgment is what would actually be absurd.
How do you know the guy smoking and says he fell asleep wasn't a fire bug?
The person who can't work because of back pain, how do you know? The person with migraines, how do you know? Are you certain the person addicted to painkillers, alcohol, etc. should not? What about the schizophrenic, depressed, or agoraphobic? YOU DONT KNOW.
But decisions like that are made all the time. Do you really have debilitating back pain? If you do, you get Social Security Disability or, if you're a municipal employee, perhaps the local government's budget pays you for as long as you're disabled. There are always stories of the guy out on total disability who is spotted playing 18 holes of golf and carrying his own clubs. The decision-maker was wrong. But that is no reason to throw up your hands and say, "I don't know. Give everyone disability."
Gee, I wonder how that would end up.
The perfect is the enemy of the good.
Maybe I misunderstood you. I see determining who should get benefits as very different from who is deserving. For benefits, we have criteria to make decisions as objectively as reasonably possible. We hope it gives the right answers but know it often doesn't. Knowing who is deserving is a completely different question. And while determining disability may be correlated with deserving, other forms of benefits are determined by work status, income, family structure, etc. that have little or no correlation to deserving. If I turn down a higher paying job I hate in order to work a minimum wage job I like and it qualifies me for benefits, am I deserving? Doesn't matter for determining benefits.
Most days I have low grade back pain and discomfort that hinders me very little. A sizable minority of days I don't notice it. I had one two week period (which delayed a ski trip I successfully completed) and a few other random days where I'm incapacitated. What if it were the other way around and I had 5 good days a year? Do you still know anything about my ability to work from seeing me play golf and carry the bag?
What I am trying to say is that determining who is eligible and who is deserving have the same sort of knowledge problems: do you have a second job you're not telling me about? side gigs? do you get paid "under the table"? how many people really live with you?
Or to take your example, is that day of golfing a normal thing or just something you were able to do one unusual day? Determining disability has criteria that are supposed to "make decisions as objectively as reasonably possible" but, as you say, often the decisions are wrong.
Now, as I see it, the decision about who is deserving is a moral one on which lots of people differ but decisions on eligibility are supposed to made on the basis of rules that have already been determined. The various moral arguments about who should get what benefits are one step back. They have already been weighed and decisions about the appropriate criteria have been made.