MD
qualiaphile
Not sure what your age is, but shouldn't medicare cover you for medical bills?
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What are the Major Advantages and Disadvantages of Socialism?
- Thread starter Sunstone
- Start date
Not sure what your age is, but shouldn't medicare cover you for medical bills?
Medicare don't kick in for a few years yet.
Yes I knowMedicare is "socialism", you know.
I guess some time in the future I will qualify as a hypocritical old fart
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber & Business Owner
And until then, do alot of keg stands, stay up all night as often as possible, eat pizza for every meal, and really push yourself on those last few youthful years.
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
Hey, at least you're honest about this, and that goes a long way in my book.
Karl R
Active Member
It's usually difficult to determine whether there's a benefit (or how great the benefit is), because people don't do scientifically rigorous studies of welfare programs. There aren't randomly assigned control groups who don't receive the benefit, so there's no comparison between the the people who receive it, and equally positioned people who don't.
Interestingly, someone actually managed to uncover some evidence (nearly a century old), that had an unintentional control group. The Mother's Pension Program (1911-1935) didn't have enough money for every applicant ... so the recipients were chosen in a somewhat random fashion. (Not scientifically random, but a large number of administrators were permitted to make choices in an arbitrary manner. On the whole the recipients and non-recipients were nearly identical.)
This inadvertently created a situation where there was a control group, and there is longitudinal data determining the life-long outcome for the recipients ... and the non-recipients.
Details of the program:
Under the program, a mother would receive $15 per month for the first child, and $5 per month for each additional child. Adjusting for inflation (1913 to 2014), that's equivalent to $360 per month and $120 per month. On average, recipients were on the program for 3 years.
Outcomes:
On average, children who were part of the program stayed in school a half year longer and earned 15% more as young adults. On average they also lived 1 year longer.
This suggests that at certain levels, socialistic welfare produces a benefit to society on any measure. The amount paid in is less than the amount eventually recovered in additional tax money from the recipients.
Sources:
Study Shows Long-Term Benefits Of Welfare Program : NPR
Washington State Historical Society > Mothers' Pensions
CPI Inflation Calculator
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
Exactly. Not all "socialistic" programs are alike, nor do all have the same amount of effectiveness or ineffectiveness.
What is absurd with many politicians on both sides of the aisle is that often they can't see beyond the end of their nose; either that or they just don't care what happens as long as they get re-elected. All too often they look at things only short-term.
Sometimes in order to save money we have to spend money. And we're seeing some of this political absurdity playing out here in the States here whereas the R's simply are not willing to fund our infrastructure repairs and improvements because it will tend to raise taxes a bit, which will have the effect of having us pay the piper "tomorrow". .
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber & Business Owner
If that were so, then very little of anything in the social sciences couldn't stand. You can't randomly assign people to be depressed. You can't randomly assign them to be raped. You can't randomly assign people to have tragic childhoods. You can't even randomly assign people to use drugs. But we do have different groups that are already there that can be observed. For studies regarding the poor, you also have to define what is welfare. If we are looking at things like drug rehabilitation centers, you can observe the group being treated, record their data, and compare with a general population that has no or poor access to rehabilitation services. With nutrition, we can observe child who received good nutrition, observe their health, and compare the same data with children who did not receive nutrition. Trying to say we can't study the effects of welfare on the poor because you can't randomly assign people to be poor is like saying evolution isn't science because we can't watch something grow in a tube and compare it a control tube.
I'm not arguing the findings of the article, but it's claim that such stuff cannot be studied because it lacks a randomly assigned group isn't really that good of a point to focus on. The very fact though they did keep records over such a period of time on its own does present a very rare opportunity, and the fact it's not just a similar area (how things are often measured against) it's the very same city. It may one day become a famous case study.
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Karl R
Active Member
That's not what I'm saying.
I'm saying we can't study the effects of welfare on the poor because we don't randomly assign welfare to potential recipients.
We could do that. It would allow us to get excellent results. But it would be an extremely unpopular way to grant welfare, so we don't do it.