I wonder what's meant by "income redistribution" in this article. In my experience with my family, giving people money they didn't put effort into earning makes them less happy, and less able to provide for their own needs. Is this anyone else's experience?
The mathematics looks like this, money adds happiness on a log scale. So going from $1K to $2K gives you as much additional happiness as going from $128K to $256K. So if you tax those with $256K at 50% and give $1K to to 128 people who have $1K you create 128 times as much happiness as you destroy.
Your study looks at a different effect than the one they are discussing.
Other theories exist - such as that people resent being taxed, with reduces their utility more than what they paid, or that people resent being given underserved money, which raises their utility less than what they received.
Also, it one admits diminishing marginal returns on money, what about diminishing marginal returns on utility ?
Maybe there comes a point where, instead of finding Kaldor Hicks optimums of Pareto efficiency, one cares more about fairness, and see this redistribution as unfair. And Kaldor Hicks is about redistribution as can be.
I am interested in any study that actually measures the effect of rates of tax on overall happiness.
> Other theories exist - such as that people resent being taxed
That part is a fact in my experience. Some people resent being taxed. I think all people seem to resent some tax or another.
> with reduces their utility more than what they paid, or that people resent being given underserved money, which raises their utility less than what they received.
I inferred that kind of thing from the grandparent comment.
Perhaps the solution to this problem is just in better marketing, rather than in not doing the transfer.
Convincing/structuring payment so that people think they are deserving can't be that hard.
>Maybe there comes a point where, instead of finding Kaldor Hicks optimums of Pareto efficiency, one cares more about fairness, and see this redistribution as unfair. And Kaldor Hicks is about redistribution as can be.
Thanks for this reference. I just looked up Kaldor Hicks and think it is an interesting tool.
giving people money they didn't put effort into earning makes them less happy, and less able to provide for their own needs. Is this anyone else's experience?
Try it with an infant, and you'll find the need to further qualify "people", because as you put it, the theory doesn't work out. So let's call them grown-ups, not referring to just being physically grown up either. Now, where do you draw the line, and how do you assess on which side of it a stranger is?
What I'm asking is, what makes you assume the person you see begging actually did have a fair shot at it? I don't deny that some of them did, but even if it was the majority; what make you assume that about every single one? That it's comfortable? That it couldn't possibly be that it is just LUCK that you weren't raped as kid and ended up as alcoholic with 12, or something like that? Just face it, as much as effort makes a difference, it's still luck to even have a chance. If everybody got what they "earned", all of us would have the same, namely non-existence. It's easy to forget privilege once you have it, and make that the cut-off point.
So personally I like to err on the side of compassion. I don't like drunks, alcohol is a black hole and to be honest, I consider some of them walking dead; I don't like being actively bothered too much, and professional beggers are air to me; but otherwise, giving a bit of change is sometimes just a way of not ignoring a person, and an opportunity to wish them a nice day. That doesn't change their life, but it's at least a tiny ray of light instead of yet another rain drop of being ignored, which is proportional to how little it costs me personally.
There are people who simply fell on hard times, and what the am I expected to ask of them so they can "earn" a few cents, or euros? To prove that it wasn't their fault, to have their papers on hand? To shine my shoes? To ask real nice? Sure, I'll admit, I like it more to give something to someone trying to sell those homeless people newspapers, or someone playing an instrument. But I rarely take the paper (though as far as newspapers go, they beat mainstream ones, they're way more interesting), and the crappier they are at playing the instrument, the more likely I am to give.
I'm not berating you for your choices, but I know why I make mine, and why I feel good about giving.
I agree, I can't walk away from someone in need either. I'll cheerfully pay my nephew's rent and groceries for one month, and he's back the next month. I'm doing well and I love him, I never say no, but I don't know how to put him back in a place where he can be independent. I want to do more for him than just give him a short-term fix.
