Skip to main content

Beggar, Thy Neighbour

The acceptability of social welfare is linked to racial homogeniety.

That is, we like social welfare unless it benefits minorities.
A Soup Kitchen run by Al Capone
(Al Capone enables freeloaders.)

I refer to a paper recently brought to my attention, Alesina, Glaeser, Sacerdote (2001), quote:
"Racial cleavages seem to serve as a barrier to redistribution throughout the world."
Being both a racial minority and in favour of strong social safety nets, I like the idea of generalising welfare opponents as racist. 😉 I also find novelty in the concept that greater diversity does not in itself erode social cohesion without input from the rest of society.

However, I would not endorse un-diversifying a society, especially through immigration restrictions or (shudder) deportation, to make social welfare more palatable.

Furthermore, there are plenty of homogenous societies - particularly in Asia - which also have negative attitudes towards social welfare. A point to which the paper writes:
"...Americans believe that they live in an open and fair society and that if someone is poor it is his or her own fault..."
The presence of social welfare signalling an unfair society, and the concept of depriving the deserving to enrich an unworthy 'other' are characteristic of zero-sum thinking. The conclusion to that logic is to deprive everyone, or exhort in coded language to "take sugar off the table" and "balance the books" through "austerity".

Moving beyond beggaring thy neighbour requires recognising that societies are not a zero-sum game. Social welfare allows everyone (including members of your 'tribe') to live and express themselves with dignity, uplifting all.

Along with Ricardian comparative advantage though, the production of losers in recent times has cast win-win thinking into disrepute, enhancing the appeal of the alternative: blaming welfare, beggars, and unfortunately, neighbours.
Labels:
Location: Cambridge, MA, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Transcode to PSP using Handbrake

Source: Handbrake 0.9.9.5530 64-bit edition Target: (Phat) Playstation Portable PSP-1000 , System Software: 6.60 Many internet articles on how to transcode video to PSP using Handbrake have not worked for me. Even the most helpful are incomplete. I hope this post will help fill in the blanks. There is no longer any PSP preset for Handbrake, but from what I can gather, the preset had only limited success as the x264 encoder would change syntax and settings between versions. Other presets that may have worked before, like 'iPod' and 'Apple-Universal' now do not. Here is what worked for me, step by step:
4 comments
Read more

Scatterbox - build an Android Tor Socks Proxy Server

Cloak your location and create a firewall bypass device with a smartphone. 🕵Uses the Tor network . Does not require root. 1 - from Google Play, download and install: Orbot Orweb browser Socks Server Ultimate (Optional)
Post a Comment
Read more

Dismissing Racism

Whenever white people kill people of colour, as in 2021's anti-Asian shootings in Atlanta Georgia , this sort of counter-commentary appears: "Since the killing of six Asian women who worked in massage parlors in Atlanta, the media has amplified the false narrative that “white supremacy” is to blame.  ... official crime stats show that white people are significantly underrepresented in terms of the violent crime threat they pose to Asians."  ... citing FBI statistics , whereas whites comprise 62% of the population, they committed 24% of crimes against Asians in 2018.  In comparison, blacks, who comprise 13% of the population, committed 27.5% of all violent crimes against Asian Americans in 2018.  So clearly, white people do not represent the biggest crime threat to Asian Americans." Not only is this an attack on the media and its imagined agenda, it also implies that Asians can't tell who's assaulting them.
Post a Comment
Read more