Jeez, wow. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to stay psychologically healthy in proximity to that situation — can I ask, what causes you to stay in the area? (Is there good to balance out the bad?)
What is the alternative though? Conditioning help on adherence to rehab and life-skill programs? Job guarantee instead of aid? Any successful policy you know of?
That's a difficult question. A good starting point would be not to assume that what we have is helpful. In many cases, doing nothing would be better. But I am also pessimistic that there is a realistic path to any solution at all. Think of someone in the GDR in 1980 asking "what can the Politburo do to fix our problems?" There's just no answer to that.
I'm afraid I find that defeatist (even though I don't know the solution either).
I'm not knowledgeable enough about the GDR to say what the Politburo should have done in the 1980s (though I recognize they had a Kremlin over their heads). Still, the space of possibilities is immense, and I can't imagine all policies would have essentially the same outcome. It takes immense energy to contain every possible scenario and force it into a single outcome. Not finding a way out is, I hope, a failure of our knowledge and imagination.
I would rather believe that I don't know (yet) what's least bad than assume all choices are essentially equally bad.
We see, even in this little exchange, 3 policy proposals: (A) status quo (B) Wisconsin-program style conditional aid (C) job guarantee for those who can work. I don't know the trade-offs here (not my field) but I'm sure trade-offs exist, and one of these should be preferable to the others.
I mean fair enough & yes there are better and worse, but for example. I think it may have been Peter Lilley in the 1980s who first pointed out the consequences of the UK “benefit taper” (sharp withdrawal of benefits creating high marginal tax rates). Then around 2003 there were lots of earnest Blairites making presentations about the benefit taper. Then in the 2010s the Cameron government discovered the benefit taper was too steep. And last month, Labour announced that the problem with making work pay was, guess what, the benefit taper.
In short, for 35 years, experts have been discovering that it’s hard to draw a line that is simultaneously flat and steep! Now, at what point does this stop being policy and start becoming policy theatre?
Great writing
Jeez, wow. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to stay psychologically healthy in proximity to that situation — can I ask, what causes you to stay in the area? (Is there good to balance out the bad?)
It's just a normal place in England. It's not specially bad.
That was thought provoking and powerful.
What is the alternative though? Conditioning help on adherence to rehab and life-skill programs? Job guarantee instead of aid? Any successful policy you know of?
That's a difficult question. A good starting point would be not to assume that what we have is helpful. In many cases, doing nothing would be better. But I am also pessimistic that there is a realistic path to any solution at all. Think of someone in the GDR in 1980 asking "what can the Politburo do to fix our problems?" There's just no answer to that.
I'm afraid I find that defeatist (even though I don't know the solution either).
I'm not knowledgeable enough about the GDR to say what the Politburo should have done in the 1980s (though I recognize they had a Kremlin over their heads). Still, the space of possibilities is immense, and I can't imagine all policies would have essentially the same outcome. It takes immense energy to contain every possible scenario and force it into a single outcome. Not finding a way out is, I hope, a failure of our knowledge and imagination.
I would rather believe that I don't know (yet) what's least bad than assume all choices are essentially equally bad.
We see, even in this little exchange, 3 policy proposals: (A) status quo (B) Wisconsin-program style conditional aid (C) job guarantee for those who can work. I don't know the trade-offs here (not my field) but I'm sure trade-offs exist, and one of these should be preferable to the others.
I mean fair enough & yes there are better and worse, but for example. I think it may have been Peter Lilley in the 1980s who first pointed out the consequences of the UK “benefit taper” (sharp withdrawal of benefits creating high marginal tax rates). Then around 2003 there were lots of earnest Blairites making presentations about the benefit taper. Then in the 2010s the Cameron government discovered the benefit taper was too steep. And last month, Labour announced that the problem with making work pay was, guess what, the benefit taper.
In short, for 35 years, experts have been discovering that it’s hard to draw a line that is simultaneously flat and steep! Now, at what point does this stop being policy and start becoming policy theatre?