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I notice that a lot of people on this site seem to be both utilitarian and right wing. This makes me confused, as the utilitarian case for a strong welfare state seems extremely strong on its face. By "strong welfare state" I mean something akin to the Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Norway, Sweden) in which the necessities of life (healthcare, housing, minimum subsistence) are essentially guaranteed, while maintaining a market economy.
Premise #1: We want to maximize pleasure (utility) and minimize pain (disutility).
Premise #2: Within the unit of people we care about, we care about everyone equally.
Premise #3: Central planning doesn't work very well, so we want to maintain a market economy.
Premise #4: We already have a fairly industrialized, advanced capitalist economy.
ARGUMENT:
Being in poverty is extremely bad for people's wellbeing, both in terms of physical and psychological health. It is extremely unpleasant for people to be homeless or hungry, or having to make decisions like choosing between heat in the winter, medicine, or food. Poverty sucks -- it is painful not being able to afford the essentials of life.
Being afraid of falling into poverty is also bad for people's wellbeing -- it is a major source of worry and concern because everyone knows that being impoverished sucks and is painful. So the existence of poverty is a cause of pain for a much larger group than those actually impoverished. Fear of poverty also leads people to refuse to take risks to avoid the pain of poverty, which leads to less pleasure.
Diminishing marginal utility. At a certain point, another yacht for the ultrawealthy rich guy is not going to make him significantly happier. Money can't buy love, you can't take it with you, etc. etc. However, charging that guy more in taxes and using those resources to eliminate poverty will make the groups mentioned in #1 and #2 significantly more happy.
We should be OK with high taxes in exchange for eliminating poverty by directly providing the necessities of life for those who cannot afford them. The pain avoided by eliminating poverty outweighs the pain imposed by the taxes (or the pleasure that is lost for the wealthy) because of the principle of diminishing marginal utility. Poverty causes more unhappiness than luxuries cause happiness.
Responses to obvious objections:
a. "Eliminating poverty will cause more pain in the long run because the economy will collapse or at the very least growth will slow, leading to a decline in living standards for everyone." Response: This doesn't seem to have happened in Scandinavia. The Scandinavian countries have been strong welfare states for a long time and are still very wealthy countries, among the wealthiest in the world. They haven't had their economies collapse from having too many layabouts and such.
b. "Charging me high taxes on wealth I created infringes on my liberties/freedom". Response: This may be a coherent objection, but it's not a utilitarian objection, it's a rights-based objection.
c. "The Scandinavian countries only could do this because they are ethnically homogenous, tightly knit societies. Look at Sweden right now, it's falling apart as they let in more immigrants." Response: This goes more to the political problem with instituting this system rather than the desirability of the system itself. The fact that present-day social democrats are pro immigration does not make immigration a necessary part of a social democracy. One can easily imagine a social democracy with Japan-style immigration restrictions.
d. "I only care about those who are deserving to not be in poverty; I don't care about everyone, I'm fine with people being in poverty if they do nothing to better themselves, or if they are in the outgroup." Response: This is also not really a utilitarian objection. Who "deserves" what is a question of justice, of deontology. But here, we are trying to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. This is difficult enough, boiling down all of human experience into two buckets, "pleasure" and "pain". If you add a whole 'nother set of buckets, "good people", "medium people", "bad people"... then you've really abandoned the exercise and are just doing deontology with extra steps. The pain someone experiences from not having housing or food or heat during the winter is plainly real and sincerely felt, even if you believe that that person should have done something different to avoid being in that state.
There are many places one can disagree with you on empirics. The most notable is here:
The marginal alternate use case for the resources is investment in future production, not yachts. The question whether resources should be devoted to providing an x-box for poor people or to building electric cars/installing heat pumps/building homes/etc.
Moreover, this argument just sort of assumes resources are available and their quantity isn't affected by our choices. But in reality, the poor people are both consumers of utility and producers of it. The actual choice we need to make is between:
A person refusing to work, being given resources anyway, and a marginal house is not inhabitable because no one is available to install drywall.
A person installing drywall in return for a similar quantity of resources, but now we have an extra house that someone can live in.
It is far from clear that (2) is worse than (1).
This is interesting. Possibly we should more widely publicize exactly what it means to live in poverty in the US? I.e. make sure everyone knows that "poverty" by US standards means lots of leisure time (most poor people don't work and aren't in the labor force), no danger of hunger, free medical care, a bigger house than the average Parisian or Londoner, 1-2 cars, etc.
From what I can tell, the only thing that's particularly bad about being poor in the US is that you spend time around other poor people.
Of course, knowing these facts does take a lot of wind out of the sails of the typical leftist who wants moar wealth transfers.
Sure, I admit that a certain segment of the population may drop out of the workforce in a strong welfare state scenario, and that that has negative effects on everyone else. The question is whether it's worth threatening people with poverty to get them to drywall houses for less money.
I don't think you've talked to many poor people about their situations. A lot of poor people do work and are still poor, they can easily end up with huge bills for seeking medical care so they avoid it as much as possible, and not even wealthy people can afford a house in Paris or London! But yes, "poverty isn't actually that bad" is a coherent response to my argument, I just think it's blatantly inaccurate.
Yes, and this is entirely a quantitative question. You just sort of assume it away and don't engage with it.
What percentage of poor people do you believe work full time (or look for full time work) 50-52 weeks/year and are still poor?
Who cares? The medical care they avoid wouldn't make them healthier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Medicaid_health_experiment
Ok. Why do you think poverty is bad?
What specific goods or services do you believe poor Americans lack? And in what proportions? E.g. "25% of poor Americans lack a car" or "15% of poor Americans have less living space than the average computer programmer working for google."
See, what I'm giving you are just standard conservative talking points. Heritage and similar economically minded right wing outfits have been blogspamming BLS and Census stats about how good American poor people have it for decades. Romney repeated these talking points on his presidential campaign, and Newt Gingrich (maybe before your time) also did. Paul Krugman (the economist, not the angry guy in the NYT) did too, and he was talking about the 1980's.
Why not include and address the decades old standard argument under your "obvious objections"?
I don't know the percentage, but a lot of people work for Walmart or fast food or as a janitor/cleaner or as a day laborer or any number of poorly paying jobs where you are on the edge of subsistence, even working full time.
The number one problem is insecurity -- having to constantly worry about stuff other people take for granted. Another problem is stigma/low social status. And obviously it's bad not being able to get all the shit that you need to live comfortably.
Decent housing
Mental health care
Dental care
Transportation (can't afford to maintain a vehicle)
Utilities (can't afford electricity/heat/water/air conditioning)
Phones/internet
Tampons, personal hygiene products in general
Let me suggest that if you want to make a utilitarian case for something, not knowing even the most basic numbers regarding things you are concerned about kind of undermines your seriousness.
In any case, I do know the percentage. It's 11%.
Do you believe their "insecurity" is a rational or irrational response to subsisting mostly on wealth transfers? How do you expect more wealth transfers to fix this?
The low status of the poor comes from their poor behavior (refusing to work, having children out of wedlock, doing drugs, etc). How do you expect more wealth transfers to fix this?
As for the specific goods and services you imagine the poor need, I'm guessing you don't know the percentage. I'm not going to cite numbers because I don't know how you define "decent" housing, but you can easily educate yourself: https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/ahs.html
Anyway, consider the possibility that conservatives don't support your purported utilitarian proposals because they have an accurate picture of what poverty is actually like, and are not just basing their theories off journalistic narratives that have been false since the 80's.
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It is extremely rare to have a full-time job and still be in poverty. The fable of an idle rich is a powerful tale, but at least in 21st century America, upper-class people work more than middle-class people who work more than lower-class people.
Like above, "people defer basic care until it gets more expensive" is an appealing story, and it is easy to imagine it being true. But aside from very specific exceptions, there is no measurable difference in health care outcomes from being given health care.
https://qz.com/574693/americans-working-less-than-ever-before/ From 2016 but shows that the lowest income quartile works less than 30 hours a week and the highest three all more than 40.
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