a serious debate of a one-sided nature

Along with a long-standing series of battles over things like abortion or evolutionary theory, I've now started fighting a running debate over my support for something like excise taxes on tobacco or alcohol (something I detailed in a rather lengthy essay on health care sometime back). The principle opposition I am encountering at the moment (it's actually a popular idea, for once, that I'm pushing), is instead to establish a requirement that people receiving public assistance are screened in a mandatory fashion for tobacco, drug, or alcohol use and if they fail these tests, they don't receive payments or food stamps (SNAPs) or whatever it was, or at least that such aid cannot be used on "non-necessities". I've gathered that the principle objection to welfare state policies is something like "poverty should suck", but this is bordering on ridiculous.

I'm just going to post the series of back and forth on this here. At one point the subject is attempted to be changed to "but people are cheating the system and getting money they don't deserve!", which 1)doesn't have anything to do with how they spend aid once they receive it and 2) isn't something I would disagree needs better management or deserves penalties for the fraud it propagates. What people do with the money is a separate issue entirely and should have remained the subject of discourse. Other person's name will be simply be "them", one because I don't think anybody would care who they are and two because it's in my experience a common enough mindset that they are representing that it should be plurally argued. It's strongly related to the sort of anti-intellectualism of religious fanatics, only with a more secularised tone. I did at least clean up his grammar and spelling errors to give an appearance of fairness to the debate (apparently necessities is spelled with two 'c's...and obviously I use a lot of words that spell check doesn't even know "externalities" "surveil"? seriously Firefox, I don't know what you've been doing without me...).

Begin rambling debate

them: "I don't believe in telling people what to do that's why I kind of have a problem with this. If this is costing working class families billions of dollars because they are paying to treat themselves that's one thing, but I really start to have a problem with the whole system when working class families are paying for this treatment on lower income people. I know its a whole different argument but people on public aid should be required to take a piss test a couple times a year, they should not be drinking, smoking, or snorting , just to get us started."

Me: "You're missing the point. It's costing US billions of dollars, not THEM (the actual users of tobacco). We are subsidising their behavior by covering some of the actual cost of their decisions. Taxing that behavior recovers the cost.

Similarly, not having any money go into low-income health care costs us something as well, if for no other reason than it deprives us of their possible productive labour inputs when maintained by basic health care or for the more pressing "personal" reason that we would have to pay for the written off costs of free health care provided by doctors bound by non-market based medical oaths to tend to the sick and dying, that's why we have that social welfare program in the first place.

And if you're saying you don't believe in telling people what to do then your solution of drug testing everyone is far, far, far worse than simply levying a tax which is ultimately voluntary. A mandatory piss test is an involuntary intrusion. An employer MAY have a valid reason not to have employees who are inebriated working for them (I am not sure that this claim is necessarily granted for any or all employers or for all substances, including substances that often are not tested for, such as alcohol), but I don't see why the government needs to make that distinction when it can use less privacy-invasive means to recapture the costs."

them: "When I was talking about the drug test I was talking about people on public aid. The way I see it its kind of like living in my moms house you live by her rules or get the hell out. If you want to smoke weed, cigs, and get drunk fine, but its not gonna happen on the tax payer dime because at that point you are not a "free man" anyway. If a regular joe schmoe wants to do his thing and is responsible for his actions and accepts the consequences for his actions that is a completely different ballgame. We need to start holding people more responsible for their actions in this country and stop making excuses for everyone's individual unique boo hoo sob story. Sometimes I wish they (lawmakers) would just come out and admit it "we want cigarettes illegal" because with all these laws it seems we are all but there."

me: "I understood what you were talking about. And it's still far worse than simply taxing the damn things to recover the societal costs of use or abuse that are amassed. There isn't any reason to treat poverty like it is prison."

them:"I not talking about poor people, I am talking about people on public aid you don't have to be poor to be on public aid. A good way to get people off that crutch would be to make them as uncomfortable in that situation as possible. I'm not saying starve them to death I am saying limit benefits only to life's necessities. No one should have to pay for an alcoholic to be on welfare."

me: "Precisely what sort of public aid are you talking about?

Roads? Schools? Tuition assistance?

You don't end up on welfare or medicare or SNAPs or SSI for disability if you have money.

I might agree the benefits of social welfare systems could be restructured, but I would prefer that we do so by removing the transfer payment portions and replace them with cash transfers. If they want to blow the money on booze and blow, by all means. But then don't expect us, the tax payers to help out on the rent payment. I think you'd see a much better, more palatable decision making process if it included actual cash flow management instead of payments in kind and this sort of system allows people to actually make decisions that increase their income naturally without having to sacrifice state welfare along the way."

them: "Public aid like, welfare, food stamps, wic, and link ect, these sorts of programs. As for your third sentence, you are severely misinformed, people with a very livable wage work the system all the time. I work with one of them, I also have a friend in the business and sees it all the time, but because she is more liberal, she pretends not to see it. and its not just people with money, perfectly able to work collect these bennifits also. I live in an area with a high concentration of white trash I see it all the time, esspecially with the business I am in.I know it may be easier said then done but in the long run it could be far cheeper. But I would like to see some kind of audit system, where you do have random drug tests. In this day and age of computers, it should be easy to turn away purchases at the store when they use cards such as no beer, soda, cookies,candy, fancy butchered cuts of meat, and everything should be generic, If its good enough for me its good enough for them. This is all just a start though you could really expand on all of this."

me: ""work the system" --- That's called fraud, not public aid. This sort of fraud is factored in (I am not "misinformed").

It would not be prevented by the sort of thing you're talking about doing either and to my mind is a much larger problem than worrying about what people use public assistance for. It's a much worse thing that they abuse it when they don't need it.

And you really should think carefully on that last sentence. "really could expand on this". That's the primary reason I am adamantly opposed to your proposal. You can of course "really expand" a tax system instead, but any excise tax is ultimately voluntary. Direct control and constraint of the sort you are proposing is not."

them: Maybe I need to be a little more clearer with my thoughts, I don't think I am projecting them to you clearly enough. I was referring to people working the system who are on public aid, I understand that is fraud But I am not calling "work the system" Public aid. I used the misinformed comment in relation to a previous statement you made "you don't end up on welfare or medicare or SNAPs or SSI for disability if you don't have money". People with money do end up on these programs, sorry man I hate that I am right but its the truth, I know them and I know of them, it happens. We do agree though about an abuse of the system being a problem, I was just putting an idea out there how to crack down an abuses. Right now the system goes largely unchecked, I was on unemployment once and had to show I was actively seeking work do people on these programs have to do that? Yes excise taxes are voluntary, but in my mind someone spending your money and my money needs severe limits and restraints on the money they spend. I don't mind people who are truly in need, buying the necessities for life,( key words truly and necessities), until they get up on their own two feet. But we need to stop and get a handle on the people committing "Fraud" and wasting away on taxpayer money. Like I have said before ( I think it was Benjamin Franklin who said something like it first) the only way to get people off gov dependency it to make them uncomfortable in their current situation.

me: "You are projecting your thoughts quite clearly. I just don't think they make any rational sense if your object is a small government, as I do. Your object is apparently to use government as a punitive force. I can accept that as your rationale, but no matter how many times you say it I will not accept it as justified logic, especially in this instance with better alternatives available (such as manipulating the price mechanism to capture externalities caused only by those directly using substances and not providing a guilty until innocent accusation on everyone else for something that usually isn't even illegal in the first place: buying alcohol, tobacco or junk food...)

It's fine to punish fraudulent behavior and abuse of public aid, I think anybody would agree to that, but I don't see how your proposed solution would have anything to do with reduction of fraud. That's basically a totally different and unrelated problem to what you're discussing with people, in your mind, mis-allocating public aid that they actually need rather than people who don't need it abusing the system by taking aid when they do not need it. I really don't see how it's necessary to tell people on what to spend it, something we already do by issuing public aid in the form of in kind payments and subsidies rather than straight cash (like a negative income tax). Quite simply, no matter how many times you rephrase your statement, it comes across to me as "I'm going to engineer it to punish people for being poor". Apparently you think that's a sensible idea. I do not and I am not moved by your arguments, nor will I be.

I see the primary reason to be concerned with economic theory as the ability of a society to best use its resources to alleviate that condition of poverty. I do recommend that we do so as often as possible with a mission of mercy and dignity, and do so as often as possible without government programs or direct government controls over the nature of aid (such as by providing education or job training rather than restricting access to consumer goods). Your idea has nothing to do with the alleviation of poverty but rather your own personal dissatisfaction of it. As a result, it does not appeal to me to follow through with as a public program. In the particular instance, to my point of view, given the rates of addiction and substance abuse and their strong correlation with a condition poverty (either as a cause of or a result of, depending on the psychology), it makes more sense to subsidise treatment or foster addiction moderation through the price mechanism than it does to punish people for a what is often a medical problem.

And it makes no sense to effectively punish and monitor people who have not committed any transgression whatsoever (who don't smoke, dope, or drink to excess) for example by requiring them to submit to regular testing. You're talking about a police state. Something, even strictly applied, I cannot accept as a functional mandate. As you said "you could really expand on all of this". I strongly encourage you to think very carefully on that statement. That's precisely the sort of problem with any government monitoring program, not just this one. Remember the furor kicked up when it is revealed that HSA/DoJ was watching right-wing organisations (not that they hadn't been before under W) as a result of the PATRIOT act and its broad power to surveil people, that's precisely the sort of abuse this idea is prone to. You're better off not surrendering such control to government in the first place rather than supposing your specific end is the only means it would be applied.

I do not see the logic in having a mandated GOVERNMENT controlled measure on what people may spend their money on and deciding for them what their priorities must be, even if the money is public assistance. It's bad enough that we tried to ban alcohol and do ban narcotics from my perspective. People who are not on such things are just as wasteful and unproductive with their spending in other ways, and we are not engaged in trimming such inefficiencies from their lives either, and this is true regardless of income (as if poverty was somehow a cause of fiscal irresponsibility). Why is it then necessary to use public aid as a means of exerting control?"