This article doesn’t do the idea any good.
A guaranteed minimum income has its merits.
Right now we not only pay people to do nothing, but we pay an immense army of gov’t union people to be caretakers of them, administering program after programs supposedly to help the less fortunate.
Simply paying the people directly as the ONLY form of assistance would eliminate all these bureaucrats. Maybe some of them could devote their talents to useful work.
Old idea. Milton Friedman called it the Negative Income Tax.
I believe our first priority should be to get people back to work. Then I would have an audit conducted to find out just how many people on welfare need it to survive, due to medical problems.
The rest of the welfare recipients would then see their pay go down by roughly 4% each month, to be totally gone in 24 months.
I would do my best to make sure there were jobs in each locality for them, but the federal government is not mandated to give money away for free to anyone that doesn’t have a clear need.
I hear what you are saying. I understand the rationale behind it. I just don’t believe in it.
It’s time we got real with the mess Lyndon Johnson created around 1964.
Trillions later, things not having improved, it’s time to get people out of their homes doing something productive.
Well...it’s time for a RESTART to “welfare and other benefits”....call it a JUBILEE....everyone has to requalify, and prove their need....or they get rice and beans, and a shovel.
nonononononoNONONONONONO!
The most dangerous thing in the world is a bureaucratic type with time to think of something to do.
That's how we got into the mess we're in.
The idea behind is a decent society doesn’t let people fend for themselves. They will always be looked after. But if people want to make more than a guaranteed basic income, they should have that choice. It operates in the opposite manner to welfare programs that forbid a beneficiary from making more than they receive in benefits. Welfare creates a perverse incentive not to work because there is no safety net in place if you do; UBI in contrast, lets you keep your income and earning more is not at problem if you want.
Fifty years ago, in 1964, Milton Friedman suggested exactly this, only he called it the Guaranteed Annual Income (GAI). The Goldwater campaign briefly considered latching onto this because Friedman was suggesting that all government transfer payments be abolished and replaced by the GAI. The campaign decided not to go with it because Goldwater himself feared that the GAI would simply be tacked on to the existing transfer payments system.
I find your entire post to be stunningly naïve.