Interesting analogy on welfare and redistribution of wealth

[Maverick]

So I'm sitting in my accounting class the other day, and the professor starts off like most days with a bit of discussion on current events. Eventually we work our way around to talking about welfare and universal health care, and the professor mentions an e-mail sent to him by a friend.

The story starts off with an economics student and a professor talking about welfare, and the student questions why it is not a good thing for the poor. The professor tells the student to come by his house later and he will explain it.

The student meets the professor at his house, and the professor goes to retrieve some buckets. He then instruct the student to go outside to the pool. "I want you to take the buckets over to the deep end of the pool" he says, "and begin filling the buckets." The student does so, then asks what to do next. "Now take the buckets around to the shallow end of the pool, and pour the water in." The student is puzzled, but does so. "Look at the water level in the pool now, has it changed?" the professor asks. The student looks and sees that it has not. The professor explains that this is the way the welfare system works - you can continue to shift the money back and forth but essentially you will change nothing.

I thought it was a pretty good analogy, but as an addendum to that, however, I had to raise my hand and point out that I thought one critical part of the story might be missing. I told my professor that I thought perhaps the story would be better if it mentioned that the student poured some water on the ground in the transfer process, or that the buckets had holes in them. He thought that was a fairly good addition as well, and we both figured that the transfer process was likely to actually force the water level down that way.

So what do you guys think? Does it fit as a good general analogy of the situation?

[roho76]

I assume when you say pouring water on the ground that is talking about bureaucracy?

[ghengis86]

amend the story to include a gun in the professor's hand when telling the student to start transferring water; maybe after a while, the kid sees how futile it is, but looks up and sees the gun and diligently goes back to work. in the mean time, the student tries to find a professor with a smaller gun or at least one that is concealed until the student transfers to another classl. holes in the bucket are good too.

[Maverick]

I assume when you say pouring water on the ground that is talking about bureaucracy?

Yeah, that's what I took the analogy to mean, and that's how I applied it to my addition. The process of transferring water with the buckets represents the governments process of transferring wealth. The buckets may be spilled, or they may have holes in them, because we know about the inefficiency of bureaucracy, as you said.

[roho76]

amend the story to include a gun in the professor's hand when telling the student to start transferring water; maybe after a while, the kid sees how futile it is, but looks up and sees the gun and diligently goes back to work. in the mean time, the student tries to find a professor with a smaller gun or at least one that is concealed until the student transfers to another classl. holes in the bucket are good too.

I likey.

[Maverick]

amend the story to include a gun in the professor's hand when telling the student to start transferring water; maybe after a while, the kid sees how futile it is, but looks up and sees the gun and diligently goes back to work. in the mean time, the student tries to find a professor with a smaller gun or at least one that is concealed until the student transfers to another classl. holes in the bucket are good too.

I'm not sure that works in this case though, because I believe the student in this story is the state apparatus actively engaged in the transfer of wealth. Are you saying the government is pointing a gun at itself?

[acptulsa]

Government points a gun at the deep end of the pool, to force it to go into the bucket. Not sure how to make that point better, given that water needs no more coertion than having a bucket put around it and lifted...

[Live_Free_Or_Die]

nt

[Dr.3D]

I like this one.
http://i249.photobucket.com/albums/gg202/DrThreeDee/happyhalloween.jpg

[zach]

I like this one.
http://i249.photobucket.com/albums/gg202/DrThreeDee/happyhalloween.jpg

sweet. :D

and I like the analogy; I'll have to use that. :cool:

[eric_cartman]

i don't really like the analogy. because welfare never claims to actually have a net benefit to society... all it claims to do is transfer money from the rich to the poor (and help the poor at the expense of the rich).

however, the real argument against welfare is that your are subsidizing the poor and taxing the rich. Meaning that you are rewarding failure and punishing success. And whenever you subsidize or reward something, you get more of it. So if you subsidize poverty, you will get more poverty. If you reward failure, you will get more failures. So even though welfare claims to help the poor, all it does is create more poverty... when of course the intention was to reduce poverty.

so even though the people who support welfare have good intentions of helping the poor... they do not realize that their policies are actually help to increase poverty, rather than reduce it. And of course, these people never really understand and connect the dots, so the more they subsidize welfare, the more poor people there are... so then they lobby for even more welfare which causes yet more poverty... and it's a cycle that gets worse and worse. It's like the analogy of pouring gasoline on a fire... they are trying put out the poverty fire by throwing welfare gasoline on it.... of course never realizing that the more welfare gas they throw on the poverty fire, the bigger the poverty fire gets.

[Feenix566]

Here's a better analogy:

The professor invites over two students. He brings them into his kitchen. He tells them, "One of you is going to bake cookies while the other one sits and watches. Then, once the cookies are done, you're both going to eat them. Now go!" The professor then sits back and watches what happens next.

[Original_Intent]

The pool analogy is pretty good. instead of a bucket he should have a bunch of pigs drink out of the deep end of the pool and wander around and piss in the shallow end.