
Generous welfare benefits make people more likely to want to work, not less - AndrewDucker
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150331074345.htm
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greggyb
> Sociologists Dr Kjetil van der Wel and Dr Knut Halvorsen examined responses
> to the statement 'I would enjoy having a paid job even if I did not need the
> money' put to the interviewees for the European Social Survey in 2010.

It seems more accurate to headline that generous welfare benefits are
correlated with people's responses to a single survey question.

In economics, the question is almost never what people say, but what they do.
It is entirely possible and plausible[0] that the response rate to the survey
question and the actual behavior of seeking and achieving employment are not
significantly correlated.

[0] Social desirability bias is strong in surveys:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_desirability_bias](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_desirability_bias)

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cauterized
Plus a strong safety net encourages entrepreneurship, since failure doesn't
have to mean losing your house, your kids starving on the streets, or going
without medical care.

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ayuvar
I liken it to the same concept as a crown corporation - with mincome, you'd
see people who would otherwise not be entrepreneurs taking a chance on things
that aren't obviously immediately profitable according to traditional MBA-
logic but that should exist anyway.

Imagine a diversified economy full of weird Etsy-style craftsmanship
businesses, or strange one-offs that are done for the love of the field.

A lot of office and retail jobs would likely be forced to improve as well,
once some of the fear of taking the leap to entrepreneurship is removed.

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hitlerwasright
>sociology dropped. What about the confounding variables of culture and such
that a simple weberian analysis might uncover - ergo, generous welfare in
germany may engender different results than generous welfare in, say,
scotland.

