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Liam Baldwin's avatar

“There are some arguments for in-kind transfers. We might think that the poor are so totally incapable of managing their own affairs that they must be given goods, rather than allowed to spend on what they want most.”

Do you have an explicit refutation for this point? If we grant that a large share of recipients would otherwise consume things we deem socially harmful (or harmful to the buyer), these calculations cease to measure what we want.

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BxM11's avatar

Counterpoint: in terms of modern christmas, a substantial cost of buying an item is search cost. Consider a doctor who could make $100/hr and spends 2 hours doing research before settling on a $70 computer mouse. If you have a mouse you like already, you can give them one and the gift's deadweight loss is -$200.

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