system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
We subsidize what we want to increase, and tax what we want to decrease. So is subsidizing welfare state increasing dependence of the state?

We subsidize what we want to increase, like business. Want private players to make industries? Subsidize land and electricity and tax less, industries start flocking. Income increases and poverty decreases.

We tax what we want to decrease. You as a businessman making so much profit, give more taxes as your income grows. It helps distrubute money towards better things.

But subsidizing welfare for people makes them dependent on it, causing them to become burden on the government and its people. E.g. California's homeless population. If you have more benefit to live on govt money why would you work.


So help me understand this concept. Should govt take care of everyone or should govt provide the methods to get a job for everyone but not provide direct money to people? Like make education and vocational training more accessible and free of cost. Govt makes the environment, let people decide how and where they want to get employment.


A noob on economics here, please point out my blind spots. Be civil in discourse. Thank you.
gpt
I disagree with your starting thesis. Taxes and subsidies are just two policy tools, and not always the best ones. For example encouraging business by subsidising electricity would encourage inefficient over use of electricity. Compare that to encouraging business by good quality stable regulations, reducing government corruption and increasing social trust.  Or establishing clear property rights (not necessarily *private* rights) can be a better solution to some environmental problems than taxes. Private property in land for example encourages land owners to maintain the long-run productivity of their property. Both subsidies and taxes come with administrative costs and the more targeted the subsidy or tax the higher tends to be the administrative cost. 

Everyone agrees that social welfare can reduce the incentives to work, this is often the point, that say a widowed parent with young kids can spend time looking after the kids, or the elderly can retire rather than struggle on. Or arguments for a UBI are sometimes made on the basis that the UBI will improve the treatment of workers as people won't need jobs so much. In terms of providing education and vocational training, many of the poorest people in society are ones who can't work, due to reasons like disability or caretaking responsibilities. It also doesn't address issues of people needing to eat now. Paying poor people money to let them meet needs like food and housing has some administrative advantages. On the other hand, healthcare costs are highly variable between individuals, there's no way the government could pay every individuals enough to cover the greatest possible medical expenses someone might face in a year, and to pay people directly would encourage mass fraud. So the government paying healthcare providers or providing medical care via public employees has advantages over cash payments.