Posted on 03/20/2014 2:14:19 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
What if you could receive a guaranteed basic yearly income with no strings attached? Didn’t matter how much money you made now, or in the future. Nobody would ask about your job status or how many kids you have. The check would arrive in the mailbox, no matter what.
Sounds like a far-fetched idea, right? Wrong. All over the world, people are talking guaranteeing basic incomes for citizens as a viable policy.
Half of all Canadians want it. The Swiss have had a referendum on it. The American media is all over it: The New York Times’ Annie Lowrey considered basic income as an answer to an economy that leaves too many people behind, while Matt Bruenig and Elizabeth Stoker of theAtlantic wrote about it as a way to reduce poverty.
The idea is not new: In his final book, Martin Luther King Jr. suggested that guaranteeing people money without requiring them to do anything in exchange was a good way for Americans to share in prosperity. In the 1960s and early 1970s, many in the U.S. gave the idea serious consideration. Even Richard Nixon supported a version of it. But by 1980, the political tide shifted to the right and politicians moved their talking points to unfettered markets and individual gain from sharing the wealth and evening the playing field.
Advocates say it’s an idea whose time has finally come. In a world of chronic job insecurity, stagnant wages, boom-and-bust cycles that wipe out ordinary people through no fault of their own, and shredded social safety nets, proponents warn that we have to come up with a way to make sure people can survive regardless of work status or economic conditions. Here are five reasons they give as to why a guaranteed basic income might just be the answer.
(Excerpt) Read more at salon.com ...
From the Forbes article.
“In 2007, the monetary base – the amount of money our government printed in its entire 231 years of existence totaled $800 billion. Today it totals $2.8 trillion.”
That's why the author mentioned Richard Nixon. He was the originator of the Earned Income Credit. He didn't get to stay around long enough to sign it into law, that "honor" fell to Gerald Ford.
Good post.
All one has to do to understand what being “given” a “living” looks like, is to witness the rot produced in Democrat run inner cities - decades of nurturing dependency and generational welfare has crippled people, who now resort to destroying each other and their surroundings.
Argh! I’m not sure what about the proposal bothers me the most: the naively arrogant notion that there is a simple solution to complex problems or the complete lack of understanding of economic reality involved in this woman’s views.
Such a proposal is wrong, economically and, IMHO, morally. It is wrong for the following reasons:
-Somebody’s got to pay for that “basic income”, and it won’t be the people getting the money.
-There is always a “creep factor” in any government spending program. Over time, taxpayers will be expected to pony up more and more for less and less results.
-Sometimes, poverty is the result of poor decisions. If people choose not to save or to spend their money on frivolous things rather than invest in their future, what makes anyone think that handing out “free” money is going to do anything but reinforce that behavior?
-In fact, you might see an INCREASE in poverty in certain welfare cases. The author suggests replacing existing systems with this program. EBT, WIC and the like have restrictions in them to try to ensure the money and goods are spent on what it is intended for. We have also seen a lot of fraud and abuse in that area. Giving strings-free cash might work where everyone makes rational economic decisions, but in reality we’re likely to see a lot of this money blown in short order.
-Despite what the author argues, it will create a disincentive for workers. Not in working at all, perhaps, but in ambition. If I can work as a fast food worker, and, with my “basic income money” earn as much as someone who has learned a trade or gotten an education, why should I push myself to go further? Especially if that free money gets cut off at some income level?
-What we NEED is a re-evaluation of our trade policies, the Obama administration’s economic policies, and so on. The best way to address income equality is with real economic and job growth.
How high is rent in Ma.?
The single sane point of this scheme: the fed does have to inject cash into the economy to balance for population growth and productivity, else prices change because more people are pursuing a fixed pool of currency; best if the fed just hands it out evenly to everyone as positive cash instead of to banks which hoard it and distribute it as debt.
Also, if you’re going to have a welfare state, then just hand it out evenly to all instead of by bizarre rules executed by a deranged bureaucracy.
(I’m not advocating a federal reserve or welfare state. But if you’re gonna have them...)
This is the beginnings of the Morlocks and the Eloi.
Strange logic v. No logic.
Just who exactly would be inclined to produce anything in such a system?
You?
Income redistribution invariably has negative aggregate economic consequences.
It can not be good for the economy.
Any arguments to the contrary are transparent sophistry.
Wealthy Arab countries do something similar to this already (for their own tiny native populations); they do no work, and import foreigners for everything (while they collect welfare petrodollars). That is why Kuwait fell in one day.
If you ELIMINATED illegal drugs, prostitution, and other vices - then, yes, it’s possible to reduce poverty, as people would only be able to spend their money on necessities.
Yep, sounds practical.
“If the government can do that, stop collecting taxes and just print what you need.”
I am all for that idea, let’s throw the locomotive into high gear and get this slow motion train wreck over with. I am tried of watching this country go to hell, its time to let the chips fall where they may.
All this money would come from where? Tax folks an extra $12,000 per year so they can receive their guaranteed $3,000 a year?
Friedman was not enthusiastic about a negative income tax, he just thought it was more effective than the then existing web of subsidies. We probably spend far north of $30k a year per person in poverty, but most of it goes to administrators and poverty pimps.
I often wonder how some of these people eat without stabbing themselves in the face with the fork.
This is beyond stupid.
This is drooling idiot.
Actually what we currently have is capitalism without free markets. The wealthy use government interference in the market place to stifle competition. The result is increased income inequality.
As if I had any.
Stupid.
The money comes from those foolish enough to work. Soon everyone learns how to beat the system.
Soon the rest of the world learns what s$$holes Americans are and start swarming in, happily taking the guaranteed income and hating us in return.
It’s inflationary. The guaranteed income becomes the new ZERO income. Prices of everything shoot up, and the folks start clamoring for a higher guaranteed income.
This is really just a communist idea, cleverly disguised with a new name.
Not only that, but you will have to pay people more than the baseline to get them off their couches so they will actually take jobs in the dairy industry. And, eventually, the liberals will want economic and social justice for cows as well as people, and that will add even more to the cost of milk.
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