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Notes -
Welfare state doesn't work that way in real life. "Idle hands are devils plaything", also it promotes single motherhood causing increased crime of the kids raised without fathers.
single motherhood probably works better in high trust, high IQ societies.
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It’s not all together clear that welfare users commit crimes at a much higher rate than the working poor, or that there’s enough difference between the two groups to make that distinction. And in practice a lot of these benefits(eg suppressing flophouses) happen regardless.
This is why I specified poor design of the welfare state encouraging bad behavior as a problem, yes.
We can't need a welfare state to prevent violent crime if it actually causes violent crime.
My post was mostly referring to petty crime, prostitution, flophouses, things of that nature. Violent crime is a different kettle of fish and best solved with policing, not any particular economic policy(and welfare doesn’t cause it either; it’s caused by a refusal to punish criminals until they escalate into heinous offenses).
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