Sorry for the delay. I’ve been on an island.

1. You are quite right that there’s a difference between correlation and causation, but I’m only trying to show that measures taken to reduce poverty in the US have failed to produce that result. To work the correlation/causation argument into it, you would need to be arguing something like – “If we hadn’t taken the measures that we did, poverty would be even worse than it is due to some other cause.” Unfortunately, that’s a counterfactual. We did do what we did, and one cannot prove what would have happened if we hadn’t. That said, there are some differences between a minimum income and the current scheme. I’m skeptical it would be much better, but I certainly don’t KNOW.

2. The relationship between “paternalistic coercion” and equality can be understood by considering the words themselves. “Paternalistic” means that one entity (in this case the government) takes a position of fatherly guardianship over another (in this case the public). This is an expression of an inherently unequal relationship. Historically “paternalistic coercion” is what governments tend to do (assuming they are at least well-intentioned) but it is not the only way one can conceive of government. Another way of conceiving of government is as a largely administrative entity, bound by a charter (e.g. the US Constitution), and having the role of simply carrying out those essential functions (e.g. defense, diplomacy, regulation of currency, public sanitation) that cannot be carried out reliably or effectively by private means. Under such a conception of government, an official who is responsible for a certain function is superior in authority to members of the public within the scope of that function, but isn’t granted the mystique of authority over them generally. The idea of governmental paternalism is antithetical to this conception of government. The second word, “coercion” expresses inequality explicitly. If one person can coerce another (and coercion means to force by violence or the threat of violence – by police authority, for example) the two persons cannot be meaningfully equal. I hope this helps lay out the terrain as I see it.

“For me the point of paternalistic coercion is to allow (through some at least semi-democratic system) people as a whole to encourage themselves and each other to do things they know are good for them but often can't muster the internal motivation to do.”

Well, I don’t wish to be harsh. I certainly understand how you, or anyone else, might entertain this view. In my experience though, things rarely work out this way. Australia is, I think it is fair to say, a nanny state. In Australia it is now illegal to take a doggy bag of food home from a restaurant. The reasoning, of course, is that someone might leave the doggy bag unrefrigerated long enough for the food to become dangerously contaminated with sal minella or some other harmful bacteria. This is paternalistic coercion at its finest. But how was such a law brought into being? Was there a great public outcry, a general yearning of Australians to be spared the possible consequences of their own carelessness with restaurant meals? I seriously doubt it. What almost certainly happened was that some legislator (or, worse, some bureaucrat) got it into his or her head that half-a-dozen deaths from food poisoning a year was half a dozen too many, and that if some miniscule fraction of the population couldn’t handle the civil liberty of taking their leftovers home, it was better to punish everyone than to take the risk. Of course this is a trivial example, but it is indicative of a mindset. In reference to gun control, I once heard a very prominent liberal politician (Pelosi, I think) make the argument that “No one needs a gun.” I’m not interested in a debate over gun control here, but simply in the argument she chose to use. Arguably, no one DOES need a gun – but you could also save a very substantial number of lives by banning motorcycles, skis, skateboards, swimming pools, football, etc. If that is to be one’s justification, it is notable that quite a few assassins have found a curious inspiration in J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. When it comes right down to it – no one NEEDS a book. I simply do not care to live in a world that has been childproofed by some coalition of do-gooders who feel that they know best. And THAT is assuming their intentions stay benign.

I would like to admit that my more-or-less libertarian free-market position has at least one serious problem. It is all well and good to say that people should be held responsible for their own lives and upkeep – but that presupposes that when you tell them to “get a job” they CAN “get a job.” For complicated reasons, I think the present population (of the US, anyway) has far outstripped the job market. The standard conservative response to this is that jobs will be created as soon as government gets out of the way of business. I think that’s true, but only to a point. A large part of the collapse of the job market, long term, is the probably inevitable consequence of technology (i.e. automation). I’m not sure how we could solve this problem, especially from a libertarian perspective – but I hardly think that creeping totalitarianism should just become our solution of default.