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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   21080 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 16, 2024

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The other day I had a conversation with someone who used to work for a Non-profit who's whole thing was getting Asylum-seeking migrants in Chicago as many resources as possible. She left that job because most of it was telling them (the Migrants) to lie to get more stuff, and coaching them on exactly what to say. Her take was that the whole thing was just moving people around and extracting money from the city so the Non-profit could continue to pay its directors their cushy salaries and justify the non-profit's continued existence, while dumping Guatemalans in the city's shelters and public housing so the men could be layabouts or thugs while the women deployed their kids to sell candy in Fulton Market (trendy restaurant district).

So not anything we didn't already know. Just funny to hear it from the horse's mouth. Especially an ethnically-mexican horse

I think in a more profound sense this is just the failure of welfare states. Fundamentally, any system that rewards negative outcomes (poverty, illegal immigration, crime, disability) will incentivise people to either adopt those negative outcomes, or to lie about having them. Regular moral hazard, whether for citizens or illegal immigrants.

The three things that can counter this are shame (less powerful in a more atomised society), honesty (less common in a low-trust society) or enforcement (very hard to do).

I think in a more profound sense this is just the failure of welfare states.

I disagree. Compare Scandinavian countries before and after mass migration.

wont UBI also counter this? if your welfare isnt tied to lying or living in poverty

Well if we had UBI that was literally universal, then it wouldn't matter whether or not people felt shame, because they'd get the UBI anyway.

I was talking about shame as a protection against, for example, somebody who can easily get a job but chooses to live on unemployment/disability benefits.

shame (less powerful in a more atomised society)

Welfare itself makes it less powerful.

"I'm not gay, but $50 is $50."

The greater the welfare is, the easier it is to stomach your pride. There are a lot of things (few of which I'm proud of) that I'd do for even as little as a year's salary.

This isn't the kind of thing we are looking for as a top level post in the culture war thread.

Things to keep in mind:

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  2. This is mostly just a hearsay boo out group post. While you should and are encouraged to bring your own perspective to things, bringing your own evidence and assuming the perspective of the audience gives almost nothing to be discussed.

I was going to leave just a warning, but you've been warned over five times in the past about this. There are rules here, we need to enforce them and we have few tools to do so. Our lightest touch tool is just written warnings. That isn't working here, so I'm moving to a one week ban, I know that seems like a harsh jump, but we've done you a disservice in the past by only sticking to warnings, and not escalating to a one day ban after your third warning.

So not anything we didn't already know. Just funny to hear it from the horse's mouth. Especially an ethnically-mexican horse

Uh, just so you know, Central Americans are the very lowest caste for old-country Mexicans. Intra-Hispanic prejudice is alive and well between immigrant groups in the US, too.

I would not take an ethnic Mexican as some sort of less-biased observer of recent illegal migrants, even a very progressive one.

Intra-Hispanic prejudice is alive and well between immigrant groups in the US, too.

As an interesting example of this in real life, when the LA City Council got rocked by a leaked recording of some hispanic councilmembers speaking, erm, "bluntly" about racial matters in local politics, the remarks casting aspersions at the city's Oaxacan community (a Mexican state heavily dominated even today by fairly unassimilated Nahua, Maya and other indio groups) had just about as much impact as ones making fun of the city's black political elite. See, e.g. news coverage here.

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