Monday, December 26, 2011
The Myth of the Culture of Dependency
I've posted a new page which has some bearing on my last few posts. It is a paper I'm working on, hopefully one day to be published in a magazine somewhere. It examines the idea of the culture of dependency that informs so much of Paul Ryan's policy proposals, I can find no evidence that such a thing actually exists. I'd appreciate feedback on it so that I can improve it further, this is an issue that I believe needs to be examined very seriously by the public and there is too little discussion or criticism of the notion. I will probably add some additional pieces to this, I do not yet examine international data which is a big part of my critique, to name just one piece still missing.
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I just stumbled across your blog while looking for ammunition with which to destroy the arguments being made by a rather wildly hopeless minarchist colleague. I very much enjoyed your post on "Conservatism's Other Pole".
ReplyDeleteYour paper on the "The Myth of the Culture of Dependency" is comprehensive and extremely useful. A problem I've encountered with those who believe in the dependency myth is that they rely so heavily on their anecdotal evidences and beliefs in stereotypes that actual data has no effect.
I was looking for some data that showed that individuals who receive gov't assistance tend not to use it very long. That particular data has been hard for me to find. It's not enough for dependency-beleivers to see that increases in gov't assistance has produced no comparable reduction in worker participation or entrepreneurship. Their belief is that gov't assistance actually alters core mental function and makes people seek sloth and further gov't aid.
But trying to counter entrenched nonsensical beliefs with data is somewhat futile.
Please keep up the good work.