Calibrated Basic Income by Derek Van Gorder [pdf]
greshm.org54 points by Suncho 2 days ago
54 points by Suncho 2 days ago
I'm interested in this as a faster intervention than QE. $10 given to a low income family will likely be spent that week. $10 of QE will just sit on somebodies balance sheet.
Understanding BI as a tool of monetary policy seems to remove the ideologically charged view we see when it is considered as part of the welfare state
> I'm interested in this as a faster intervention than QE.
But BI / UBI's usual argument is that because it would be long term and reliable, it would allow the recipients to make long term choices. Such as taking on an occupation they like rather than one that pays better.
If you make this an intervention medium, you loose this predictability.
The intervention style you discuss has been used during the Covid crisis: just mail checks to people based on last known year income. That's always available. It's not a question of basic income.
I really wish people would learn to keep emotion out of this topic. There is really one ultimate question here: "Is this the best use of our tax dollars?". Not: "Does this feel like the best use of our tax dollars?".
Show me how much UBI saves police departments, social welfare services, the health-care system,etc.. and how many new tax paying consumers it produces. Is it a reliable investment on people or is it a poor gamble? I've been hearing about this since before the 2016 election, there should be ample data on this, instead of speculation. And I have no problem with cities/states re-attempting and retrying new approaches to UBI.
That said, are there any studies or experiments out there where instead of a blind UBI, people are put in a labor pool of some sort where they get guaranteed income but if they're able-bodied they must make themselves available to perform jobs for the state or clients of the state? I'm thinking this should be the alternative to things like prison labor. Again, take the emotion and speculation out of it, what do we have left?
I think it's even rational to not keep emotion completely out of something like this, since UBI is not meant to maximize economic output, it's meant to improve the quality of life for most people.
In order to asses how that quality of life can be improved, it's necessary to treat humans as humans, and not as some automatons for which a specific KPI needs to be maximized. Any proper assessment of quality of life has to have some instinctive component that models the human element, even if it's only used to picking what weighted set of metrics should measure quality of life.
This take is too far removed from reality. There isn't even a good minimum wage for people who want to and can actually work. employment laws are too much against workers and for employers. there are endless social issues that require funding, why would UBI be a good idea given all that?
Yeah, treat humans as humans. the disabled, the elderly, the mentally ill, those who can't care for themselves, they should get help first right? Some situations are not zero-sum, this however is a zero-sum situation where UBI is funded by tax payers who would rather see their money spent elsewhere.
Either it is a general solution that addresses many social issues or it is a welfare program. If it is welfare then it needs to reflect society's appetite on who should get assistance. I do think even when the scope is narrow, it is better than what we have today where you really have to fight tooth and nail and surrender your privacy and dignity to get things like food stamps. But wealth distribution itself needs a huge shake up as well as a dramatic increase in taxation before UBI can be practical at a national level.
> There is really one ultimate question here: "Is this the best use of our tax dollars?". Not: "Does this feel like the best use of our tax dollars?".
There have been numerous pilot studies, e.g. those listed on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income . The problem is that opponents of UBI invariably point out that as only some people received it, and only for a limited time, that it wasn't universal, or that it took place in in some other country, or decades ago, so it doesn't apply in their country, or today.
> Show me how much UBI saves police departments, social welfare services, the health-care system,etc.
Its purpose is to ensure that everyone has their basic financial needs met, not to provide those particular government services.
> Its purpose is to ensure that everyone has their basic financial needs met, not to provide those particular government services.
The government is run by the people. If it increases cost to tax payers over all then the tax payers (people/voters) have every right to oppose this. Even social security alone (for elderly people who can't care for themselves) is untenable, the government has been borrowing from social security funds for decades. Many millennials are at risk of paying for SS their whole lives only to find it can't actually support them at their old age. UBI doesn't make sense at-cost.
The reasonable arguments I've heard state that homelessness, crime, medical cost and similar things will have reduced cost, in which case, sure, why not. But there are a long list of things that need funding long before UBI, if it is at-cost. Another good example is minimum wage, does it make sense to have such a low federal minimum wage and impose UBI on top of that?
> If it increases cost to tax payers over all then the tax payers (people/voters) have every right to oppose this.
They should be informed. There are various proposals (this one is new to me), and issues with it which are still unclear. And there's a lot of misinformation from people ideologically opposed to UBI.
For some people, UBI would replace existing benefits (examples of which might include child benefit, unemployment benefit, student grant, the non-contributory part of old age pension). That doesn't cost anything. Reduction of bureaucracy (no further need for means-testing the benefits UBI would replace) actually saves money. People already earning an income would of course pay extra taxes to fund UBI, but they would also receive it, so that would just be redistribution with no net cost. That leaves only people not seeking work, e.g. those looking after their children but not claiming any benefits.
The emotional valence of a policy does actually matter, since you have to sell it to voters (or whoever is in charge in a society). Technocratic governance is not a stable way to run society, as the last 30 years have shown. Any political agenda with a hope of being enacted needs to stir the heart in order to have any hope competing against others. The fact that a policy is provably a good idea and would make everyone better off in a theoretical world where everyone went along with it, is not even necessary let alone sufficient for it to become a real policy.
> Show me how much UBI saves police departments, social welfare services, the health-care system, etc
Sure, people can do that, but remember that it's impossible to measure wealth without distributional concerns. Whenever you ask "will this make us richer", there's an implied wealth distribution in the question, since what's valuable depends on who has money.
I'm asking more in the lines of "will this sort of and roughly make for its cost by savings elsewhere, resulting in minimal cost to tax payers?"
Generally speaking, it reduces the cost of welfare programs by replacing complex need-specific bureaucracies with a simple blanket payment. Food stamps go away, for example, assuming a large enough payment. Similar for low-income housing, government cheese, Medicaid, etc. (Again, depending on the payment.)
So the total cost to government is lower, but probably not enough that the costs of the program are covered. Beyond that, it’s a wealth redistribution program. Wealthy and/or high-income earners pay more tax so that low-income earners get a net benefit.
The argument in favor is that the wealthy paying more tax is a net positive to society, because $3000 is worth more to someone earning $20K/yr than it is to someone earning $500K per year.
The biggest set of data points comes from the most obvious and widespread UBI - the state pension. Available to a certain section of the population
That's how all UBIs thus far appear to work. You need a fixed exchange rate area where some people don't get the UBI so that the physical output that actually funds it can be extracted from the people who don't receive it. That separation can be physical area, or age.
We can see from the state pension that the majority of people in receipt of it don't work. Instead they live off the output of others.
If UBI was a realistic possibility then the age at which people receive the state pension would be heading down towards 18 (since a UBI is just a state pension where the qualification age is the age of majority). The data tells us that the qualification age for retirement pensions is heading upwards, due to a lack of productivity gains to support it.
We also see complaints about its existence, which demonstrate that the capital inheritance maintained by the older generation and handed over to the young is not seen as sufficient to justify the state pension payment given to the old. Capital hasn't been maintained well enough and doesn't give enough to younger people. To the extent that younger people are agitating to have the state pension reduced or removed.
Switch 'old' and 'young' for 'in area' and 'out of area' and you see why UBI 'experiments' always end or are ended. Those who end up working to create the material output that actually funds the transfer get fed up getting nothing material in return and have the transfer stopped.
Somebody has to do the work to grow the carrots. If you aren't doing anything meaningful in return, (which means what the carrot grower wants you to do, not what you want to do) why won't they stop growing carrots when they have enough for themselves, and have Fridays off?
Empirical evidence from UBI pilots shows most recipients continue working. This invalidates your entire analogy and comment.
However there are still some other points worth making:
1. No, pensions and UBI are different things. Asserting that 18 year olds will react the same as 70 year olds to receiving enough money to live on isn't just against the actual evidence, but against really basic common sense.
2. Without getting too into the weeds, UBI doesn't mean that no one works. It changes the bargaining power of the poorest and most taken advantage of. The carrots will still get grown, but it won't be by abused laborers in de facto slavery.
3. "The data tells us that the qualification age for retirement pensions is heading upwards, due to a lack of productivity gains to support it" - False. Productivity has risen for 50 years. Wages have not risen to match.
> Somebody has to do the work to grow the carrots. If you aren't doing anything meaningful in return, (which means what the carrot grower wants you to do, not what you want to do)
You seem very confused. The person who does the work to grow carrots is the carrot grower. The person who owns the land and imports seasonal workers 10 to a cabin is an exploiter.
> I really wish people would learn to keep emotion out of this topic. There is really one ultimate question here: "Is this the best use of our tax dollars?".
That's what you feel. You've already introduced emotion, by using the highly subjective word "best", and the loaded phrase "our tax dollars."
> Show me how much UBI saves police departments, social welfare services,
And yet, there is more to UBI than savings. It's also proposed as a means to give people more freedom. Your choice to look at savings betrays an emotional attachment to economic value over all else. But that's not the same for everyone.
That said, I do not believe UBI can ever live up to its goals, and can actually create a worse society, even after initial success. That alone makes it subject to speculation and emotion. The effect of UBI simply isn't predictable. Economists can't even predict a moderate crisis when it's about to unfold, let alone the long term consequences of a radical system change.
UBI is hence a political choice, and one that's tied to personal expectations and hope.
Is politics supposed to be about maximizing the government's money? We saw where that lead with businesses. I thought the government was there to do things that weren't good profit maximizers but made the world better.
They are saying that a good justification for a UBI would be if it maximized the value obtained with the spending. If $1 spent on basic income were demonstrated to improve society more than $1 of police spending, and so on.
It's of course harder to measure value to society than it is to measure profit, but it is reasonable to consider it when looking at policy proposals.
A government is a collection of politicians. Those people are power seekers by definition. Almost always, the increasing the size of the budget under their control increases their power.
Politics is supposed to make maximizing money a good idea.
All things being equal (which they're not) it would be a bit odd to choose a policy that ends up being more expensive. Either money doesn't work as it should or it's a bad policy.
In this case the hidden costs of police and health is a lot higher than the hidden cost in what is effectively a purely administrative change.
In most western countries there are few state-run enterprises so there's little "government's money". There's taxpayer's money, and they care how it's spent.
Every time I think about that it strikes me as a dumb idea. Everything that cant be allowed to fail should be a government enterprise.
I would go nuts with the concept, turn city hall into a museum, hotel, grandcafe, restaurant, cinema, casino, conference rooms, desks for rent, city tour guides, etc etc open 24/7. Live music if there are no council meetings on the big screen. It should have a room to smoke weed too.
If you ignore how silly it sounds, what do you think the revenue will be like?
More and more things will become too important to fail, in this scheme. ;)
> There is really one ultimate question here: "Is this the best use of our tax dollars?"
This attitude right here is why UBI will never exist without being a farce, a trap, and those that go on UBI regulated to institutionalized misery.
Plain fact: humans do not give gifts without expecting returns. UBI violates this basic tenant. No, the economic activity generated by UBI is not enough, that's a flat wash, the returns need to be just like investments.
> I really wish people would learn to keep emotion out of this topic.
Emotions are the fuzzy result of billions of years of experience. We are capable of great things if the mind set is right. The mind set is almost entirely emotional. You are curious, you learn, you interact with others, you set goals, you accomplish things. If others do the same we can be proud together. It takes very little to disrupt this process and create people who don't give a fuck anymore.
I get that you want things to be analytically sound as anything else would be worthy of paranoia. Just read the article and see it is exactly what you've asked for.
> There is really one ultimate question here: "Is this the best use of our tax dollars?".
The government has far more ways of financing things than taxes. I’m not sure why we refer to money this way—it’s fundamentally disingenuous. A federal budget is not the same thing as a household budget in any way.
That argument makes no sense, I don't care that the government has other revenue sources, those revenue sources still belong to the people. The government doesn't have its own money, it manages its people's monies. And UBI at significant cost only makes sense if the people agree to that cost.
If people are paying a significant portion of their salaries, one-third or even half, towards rent, does it truly make sense to implement UBI? In my opinion, the answer is no. Instead, we should focus on establishing a Universal Basic Land: https://mertbulan.com/2025/03/02/we-need-universal-basic-lan...
It seems to me that receiving a piece of land could be a liability. Some probably likes the freedom to choose where they live. Thus receiving money that one uses to pay rent is better than receiving by lottery a piece of land in the middle of nowhere. Some pieces of land live under municipal/regional rules that forces the user to take care of it in some way (build, prune trees, etc.)
An option to choose UB land or UB income when reaching 18yo might be an interesting compromise.
> UBI is first introduced at any arbitrarily low amount higher than $0. The fiscal authority then gradually increases the payout until the maximum-sustainable level of UBI spending is discovered
> Notably, since this policy is proposed to be 'funded' by a monetary policy contraction, it in theory requires no tax or consolidation of existing government programs to implement; nor does it necessarily imply a net increase in the overall money supply.'
What happen if this CBI maximum happen to be a very low amount? Too low to be an ‘income’, for example 10$.
I’m saying that because there has been periods where monetary policies have already been very tight [0] (recently following the subprime crash). According to my understanding of the paper, in the periods there would be no leeway to fund this CBI.
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1470953/monthy-fed-funds...
Yours is the first comment that suggests you read the article. At least kinda? Not sure anymore.
US banks create, though lending, 10.7 Trillion per year. If money creation though lending was shut down entirely it would work out to something like 3500 per person per month. You would have the same amount of money in circulation.
Rather than trickle down though clogged tubes it would stimulate spending directly. The economy would then greatly favor companies that do things that are useful to citizens.
Lowering interest rates might stimulate some part but I've never seen it affect my paycheck directly. If the measures don't influence peoples salaries their purchase power doesn't change much and the measures have little effect on that part of the economy that is relevant to citizens. You might improve the economy, if you don't improve quality of life simultaneously the economy increasingly becomes something unrelated to human life - which is bad.
> US banks create, though lending, 10.7 Trillion per year.
for which interest rate? how much was it creating when it was at its lowest rate?
> What happen if this CBI maximum happen to be a very low amount?
It shouldn't need to be pointed out that that's deeply unlikely, but I'll point it out anyway.
The available monetary contraction is orders of magnitude larger. Economic conditions where it would be constrained to such a low level would likely be rare and temporary. And, it's generally accepted that direct cash transfers increase spending.
The issue with the current system is it gives a lot of money and power to banks, and finance.
The issue with the proposed system, is that debt is actually a good thing for normal people. For example if you are young, productive, and come from a poor background, then you might buy a house with a mortgage. If debt is more expensive, then you are less likely -- and older people (and rich kids) are more likely -- to be able to afford these houses.
You might say that the current system is unfair, because wealthy people won't need loans and can put their money to work exploiting poor people. But in a system where we redistribute wealth this way, the impact is harshest on the poorest people. The things that are limited in supply and high in demand will immediately go up in price. The things they wish they could buy, and plan long-term, will become unattainable. And I've not even gotten onto how this would affect productivity.
Everyone is focused on how the rich are getting richer. This is inevitable in liberal societies. The goal should instead be to stop the poor getting poorer, and I'm going to need some serious convincing that handing people a CBI, instead of providing debt, is going to actually benefit and not hurt them and the whole economy.
What you are talking about is inflation, which is due to more demand or lower supply. Lowering demand or raising supply is the solution. Since lowering demand is anti-human it seems raising supply is the only way.
> Everyone is focused on how the rich are getting richer. This is inevitable in liberal societies. The goal should instead be to stop the poor getting poorer
These things are fundamentally connected. When the wealthy have too much power, they squeeze the middle and the poor too hard.
Unlike much else in life, the pool of money is a zero-sum game (though this is addressed in the paper, notably). When 3 Americans hold more wealth than 50% of the rest of us, that's a real problem. This historic and rising inequality leads nowhere good, and we are in existential crises which require that this be properly addressed.
Focusing on 'wealth inequality' usually leads to policies that hurt the economy, and make us all poorer, and actually increase the inequality. It hurts poor people more than the rich when we make bad economic decisions, and this paper proposes just such a decision. What can we do that won't backfire? We need a strong economy to help poor people.
> Focusing on 'wealth inequality' usually leads to policies that hurt the economy
When was the last time focusing on 'wealth inequality' was done in earnest? Not any time recently, given the complete lack of anti-trust regulation and the gutting of most unions and pensions.
Can you describe some of these policies with historical sources, please?
When you say "the economy", do you mean "rich people's yachts"? ...
"Trying to address inequality makes us all poorer" - wow.
If you really believe that's true, at least say why, or bring a source (other than Ayn Rand please lol). What's the mistake you believe people are making? Because just declaring something like that is like saying, we can't address unsafe driving because it will make people drive worse. It's clinically absurd.
Here's what I think - economists don't talk about inequality because of the three reasons discussed here [0]. It's not in their models, and it's not in their class interest.
> What can we do that won't backfire?
Tax the wealthy. No it's not easy. Yes it can be done. Yes it has worked in the past.
0 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CivlU8hJVwc&embeds_referring...
By subsidizing aspects such as schools, police and other govermental institutions a basic payout / investions to the public is already in place. Expanding this to other basic rights would be reasonable and prevent a lot of social problems that will only heavily increase in the future. And im not talking about the country that currently abolishes all good reason and gambles with social security. Basic aspects such as shelter, food and personal security should be given as a basic right.
In Alaska you have UBI and it comes from the state selling oil… where does the money come from for pie-in the-sky UBI?
Basically all industry, all commerce pays dividends/taxes and those get distributed.
People that use their money to invest (time or money) into good companies will profit more, people that use it for just consumption will remain low 'income'.
When companies succeed as a whole (eg move to all solar,robots,ai) all 'shareholders' will benefit. one of those will be the UBI program
I suppose the question is if controlling the economy with a single lever for interest rate is a poor solution. The answer seems an obvious yes.
I've always thought a basic income should start with 10 bucks so that we can figure out the logistics of it. Have real world data on how hard it is to implement.
In Luke Martinelli published a paper about a (U)BI trilemma:
> As basic income (BI) has ascended the policy agenda, so proposals have come under increasing scrutiny for their affordability and adequacy for meeting need. One common objection to BI has been that it is impossible to design a scheme that simultaneously conforms to these two criteria. In this article, I develop a conceptual framework for analysing the trade-offs that afflict BI policy design. I suggest that while the idea of a policy dilemma between affordability and adequacy does indeed afflict 'full' BI schemes, it is possible to design an affordable and adequate 'partial' BI scheme. However, this comes at the cost of (at least partly) forfeiting some key advantages that motivate interest in BI in the first place, since these only arise as a consequence of the elimination of means testing and related conditionality from the welfare system. Thus, BI proponents face a three-way trade-off in policy design between affordability, adequacy, and securing the full advantages of BI as a radical simplification of existing welfare policy. The trilemma is illustrated with reference to original microsimulation evidence for the UK, which demonstrates that at most two of the three criteria can be achieved in a single scheme.
* https://researchportal.bath.ac.uk/en/publications/a-basic-in...
* PDF: https://purehost.bath.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/196619819/...
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Every opinion on UBI is short sighted, and does not understand the macroeconomic poison that is UBI. Our economy, all economies, have lowered ethics players operating at the top of each economy. UBI institutionalizes these low ethics players, as well as institutionalizes the UBI recipients and forever casts their offspring into those economic roles. UBI is nothing less than the death of hope and the elimination of any economic ladder up and out of one's birth situation. The only path is stagnant or down.
As if current economic structures don’t already entrench powerful players? Lol.
CBI, as outlined in the paper, is funded through monetary contraction; meaning it does not introduce traditional taxation distortions or increase government control over industry.
If anything, UBI/CBI reduces dependence on hierarchical employment structures by providing individuals with a baseline income. This allows more freedom to reject exploitative labor conditions.
Historical evidence suggests that when people receive unconditional income (eg, Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend), entrepreneurial activity and workforce participation generally increase.
> institutionalizes the UBI recipients and forever casts their offspring into those economic roles
Poverty traps generally result from means-tested welfare programs, not unconditional income.
Many existing welfare programs disincentivize work because earning more means losing benefits. CBI is not means-tested, so earning more does not reduce benefits. If anything, it provides a safety net that makes risk-taking easier.
Pilot programs in Finland, Canada, and the U.S. show that UBI does not significantly reduce employment. In Kenya, cash transfers increased education rates and business activity among recipients, breaking generational poverty cycles.
If you want to declare things like "every opinion but mine is short sighted", it's generally best practice to demonstrate that you understand the relevant arguments and data.
It does not matter how bad the current economic structures are, they have a path out. "Trickle down economics" sounded good at the time too, and now it is recognized as a farce. UBI is a bigger farce. There are at least two major issues with UBI:
1) Any system that does not provide an upward ladder to the economic top, despite being better at the bottom, is not better in whole and is actually negative for the species as a whole. Hope and the ability to better one's situation is essential. UBI and it's variants institutionalize economic positions, and that destroys hope short of an overthrowing revolution.
2) UBI will exist in our social human Capitalistic world where any and all expenditures are eyed for reduction. Those on UBI (or what ever name it ends up having) will observe a gradual reduction of their UBI and a gradual criminalization of their economic parasitism. This is human culture. This reduction of the "economic waste" that is UBI is inevitable. Humans do not give gifts for any lasting duration without oversized returns.
Just look at the top posts: they ask "is this the best use of our tax dollars?" as in once UBI is active, such attitudes will immediately seek to reduce it.
To point 1, how does receiving, say, $1,000 a month remove hope and prevent bettering oneself? Anyone receiving UBI can still get a job to get additional money. Anyone already working is still receiving their salary. I would not stop trying to promote and make more money, let alone quit my job because I was receiving an extra grand a month. Just like suddenly not having to pay for healthcare and having that extra money in my pocket wouldn’t disincentivize me.
On point 2, the idea that UBI is parasitism and corporate handouts are not is ridiculous. UBI is basically the same as a stock dividend paid to shareholders, where everyone owns one “share” of the country, with all of its natural resources, infrastructure, trade, etc (something literally done in Alaska already with oil revenue). Taxes already go to things an individual will not personally use or directly benefit from, but the aggregate is a benefit to all. The highway system for example, where any individual strip of road may or may not “make more” than it costs, but the system of transit benefits everyone. Eliminating (relative) extreme poverty, and all of its criminal, health, productivity loss ills that come with it, while also reducing the massive cost to manage, check, and enforce means tested assistance is a net benefit.
People receiving UBI will have any additional income they generate deducted from UBI. This is human nature.
I do not personally feel that people receiving financial aid is parasitism, but I do understand that is what it will be called by it's opponents, and they have the power to frame public opinion far more than the proponents of UBI.
I do not see the points advocating UBI realistically addressing how every day dirty human politics will distort the reasoning and create emotional negatives that will drive public opinion about those on UBI. I believe UBI would be great in a more mature civilization that we do not have. Also realize that UBI removes economic power from those on UBI; if the economic powers can, UBI will not be issued in normal currency, it will be credits towards only certain approved things. If the economic powers can, those on UBI will lose their vote, or be regulated back to 3/5th of a vote. Do not underestimate what happens when one group gives up power to another. It is never pretty.
> People receiving UBI will have any additional income they generate deducted from UBI. This is human nature.
Then it isn't UBI. By definition, you get exactly the same amount as everybody else, regardless of their income from whatever source. This means that you're always better off if you take a job.
>People receiving UBI will have any additional income they generate deducted from UBI. This is human nature.
Putting “this is human nature” as the full stop explanation tells me nothing and convinces me of nothing. How is Alaska’s UBI deducted based on income? That just isn’t how UBI works and not what UBI is. Same with your statement that it will be for “only certain approved things” which is not UBI, but means tested assistance, which as I said, comes with huge monetary waste in paying people to define what is “approved”, developing mechanisms on how it will be tracked, on businesses to implement systems, and on people to monitor compliance.
UBI is basically a tax credit. If you are poor enough that you pay less taxes than the UBI, you get a tax rebate. If you pay more, you get the money in the form of less tax obligation. The US already spends $1.101 trillion on welfare programs, a significant portion of that is wasted in the massive bureaucracy needed to oversee means tested assistance. If it was a simple tax credit with no overhead, that would be over $4,000 per adult per year.
“those on UBI” shows that you are not talking about UBI, because UBI is universal. Elon Musk would get UBI and pay $12,000 less on his taxes, and the single mother working at McDonalds would also pay $12,000 less on her taxes, likely resulting in a tax rebate check. To reiterate, it is literally just a dividend paid for being a “shareholder” of the company that is the United Sates (or whatever other country).
The math does not work for UBI to exist at all, and all I see are wishful unrealistic thinking that might work in a more mature civilization we do not live within.
All I see is you making sweeping claims no justification or any information, data, or anything at all to back it up. Saying "The math doesn't work" when we literally could convert current welfare to $4 grand a year for every American adult as UBI means you are just flat out wrong.
Because the majority of opinion holders are refusing to read and internalize the parent article. You're just echoing sentiments that people make regarding their opinion on typical welfare - which your parent comment already addressed completely.
Either TRY and refute those comments or don't comment at all.