Since the basic income concept intrigues some folks, here is an interesting piece on it.
VOX A Basic Income
The Hill Zuckerberg
I am not sold on it by any means, but am open to the concept if it eliminates all these different welfare programs.
VOX A Basic Income
The Hill Zuckerberg
I am not sold on it by any means, but am open to the concept if it eliminates all these different welfare programs.
30 comments:
Of course, one thing we could do is simply eliminate all these welfare programs. That would save a trillion dollars or more for the government, and provide some real incentives for people to "get off of welfare" because there wouldn't be any. Of course there is a middle ground where we switch to, say, a single program that requires recipients to work or train for work, up until some reduction of benefits kicks in. My favorite approach would be a steeply graduated "negative income tax" combined with a work requirement (and "coaching"). Everybody files a tax return and the less you make the more "refund" you get, BUT the more you make the higher your total income-- your "refund" drops but not dollar for dollar with your income-- up to some point above the poverty line when you slowly start to pay taxes.
Since we know that churches and charities can't keep up with the demand, jerry's response amounts to letting people die in the streets.
My only concern about UBI is how to reign in inflation.
Moose
Moose,
Prove this... "we know that churches and charities can't keep up with the demand"...
Do you really think so little of private American citizens that you think they would watch their neighbors die in the streets?
You think that they would hoard their money instead of helping those who truly need it?
You must hang with a really selfish and self serving crowd... :-(
Now I agree that there are certain benefits of scale to having government in the aid business.
However there is also that terrible "promoting/ growing dependency and bad choices" other side to consider.
Kevin Drum has been recently blogging about the coming mass unemployment again. Sooner or later we are going to need UBI.
Mass Unemployment Will Start Around 2025
Mass Unemployment Starting in 2025? Believe It.
My current plan is to retire in about 15 years. Will my teaching job last that long or will I be replaced by AI?
Jerry,
Prove this... "save a trillion dollars or more for the government"
The reality is that the vast majority of "welfare" goes to the children, the elderly & the disabled. Maybe only 3% is squandered... But of course that is ~$30 Billion per year.
And if more behavioral norms were required to qualify... Maybe the number of single parent households and children trapped in poverty would plummet.
"Do you really think so little of private American citizens that you think they would watch their neighbors die in the streets?"
The programs we have today did not emerge out of nowhere, John. They addressed needs that were being unmet by charity and churches.
Sean,
I agree that there was a group of citizens in power at different points in time who thought growing our welfare state was a good thing. Therefore it grew.
Like today's far left they saw people who were poor and suffering, and they saw people with money... And to ease their conscience they wanted to solve the problem the quick way. (ie take fish from Peter and give them to Paul)
This does not prove that churches / charity would not have been the better long term option, or that they could not have kept up.
Would the situation be so bleak for many families, women and children if our society had chosen differently?
"This does not prove that churches / charity would not have been the better long term option, or that they could not have kept up."
Well, you can play alternative history fantasies all you want. The reality is that before Social Security, some states had nearly half of all seniors living in poverty. Today, seniors are the least likely age group to be in poverty.
I have no issue with Medicare, SS and /or Medicaid for Seniors.
They seem unlikely to create babies that they:
- can not afford to feed, house and/or provide healthcare for
- are not mature, dedicated, educated, self disciplined and/or capable enough to teach how to grow into mature independent educated law abiding citizens.
- etc
Poverty Demographics
"Family type has a significant bearing on poverty. Families headed by two adults are likely to have more sources of income than single-adult families with children and are therefore less likely to be poor. In 2015, nearly 4 out of every 10 nonmetro families headed by a female with no spouse present were poor (36.2 percent) and nearly 5 out of every 10 of those with related children were poor (47.3 percent)."
CPS Struggles
Child Maltreatment Data
"Child maltreatment is influenced by a number of factors, including poor knowledge of child development, substance abuse, other forms of domestic violence, and mental illness. Although maltreatment occurs in families at all economic levels, abuse, and especially neglect are more common in poor and extremely poor families than in families with higher incomes."
John, I said eliminating welfare programs would save a trillion dollars. You yourself have often used this same figure. I wasn't suggesting eliminating these programs and replacing with a single one that spent as much, though that would be an improvement, but rather of eliminating ALL government means-tested programs. Just like Obamacare "repeal and replace," though, we would at least need both steps-- eliminating one and creating another, better. It is going to take years to get people who lived their lives with one set of incentives to adapt to a completely new set.
Moose, Sean, the difference between current private charities and government assistance is that the privates actually move people from dependendence to self-sufficiency and move on. An impersonal government handout with no strings fosters more or less permanent dependency.
The fundamental problem with basic income and government welfare both is that neither creates any actual help to get people to where they don't need it, while punishing those people who succeeded on their own. It's warehousing the poor, when the natural progression of wealth in society automatically limits the population-- non-poor people have fewer kids, who in turn do better.
A UBI would actually allow folks receiving it to look for work without them needing to worry about making $1 too much and being kicked off of the assistance they need to survive.
And I don't think you understand just how much of a drain it is on people who must constantly worry about where the next dollar will come from. That type of stress actually promotes poor decision making.
Moose
A UBI would /allow/ folks to look for work, but why should they?
And a progressive negative income tax would NOT remove their "refund" dollar for dollar, so work would be incentivized. It is a valid criticism of the current system, but the current system has to go for lots of reasons.
And what I understand about human nature is that hunger is a great motivator and free food is not. Free food is how you get the wild pigs into the trap.
"A UBI would /allow/ folks to look for work, but why should they?"
You're right. Perhaps they will volunteer their time to important causes.
Moose
"And what I understand about human nature is that hunger is a great motivator and free food is not. Free food is how you get the wild pigs into the trap."
Spoken from a place of privilege.
Poor people have a higher cognitive load than rich people. It hampers their decision making. Strings-attached welfare does not decrease that load, it adds another layer of concern.
Moose
"Perhaps they will volunteer their time to important causes."
That may be the case, but unfortunately human nature and history shows us that there is a portion of humans who are very happy to relax and live off the efforts of others.
Even if it is only 3% of humans, that would still be ~6 million American adults...
"That may be the case, but unfortunately human nature and history shows us that there is a portion of humans who are very happy to relax and live off the efforts of others."
It's going to be pretty darn difficult to live off of the UBI (especially if you're gassing most of the other welfare programs).
How about a different approach -- wage subsidies? It gets around the once-a-year problem of the EITC and it also limits some of the alleged economic damage of an increased minimum wage.
I'll have to give that some thought.
The challenge of caring for and helping the truly unfortunate while not encouraging sloth, fraud and bad choices seems very tricky with a one size fits all nation wide system operated by bureaucrats.
And I can foretell the far Left's demand the day after UBI is passed... "Society owes them a bigger wage!!!"
Somehow I just wish that American consumers were not so obsessed about saving money. I know people who shop Walmart on the way to the lake so they can save some money. Whereas all my shopping is done in the town of Canby MN. ~10 mile East of our place on Lake Cochrane.
My point as usual. If people started supporting their higher paying local and domestic businesses this whole discussion would be less important.
I like Sean's idea. Call it a "negative income tax" in which you get NOTHING unless you file a return, and when you do that you and claim no income you are put on a list of charities and official departments who will come and try to help you out of your situation, including job placement and training organizations. When you do have an income, the tax is progressive so that your total income, including your "refund" is higher than if you don't-- that is, you don't lose dollar for dollar.
Of course you could do something quite similar with the FAIR tax, which among its many other benefits includes a built-in "border adjustment tax" that would make "Buy American" the low cost choice.
Quote without comment:
"According to this study, only 3 percent of millennials who have a high school diploma, who are working full time, and who are married before having children are poor. On the other hand, 53 percent of millennials who have not done these three things are poor."
Makes sense to me.
So, is it better to just give 100% of folks a UBI, regardless, or would it be a lot cheaper to "correct" those 50% that have gone astray?
"Somehow I just wish that American consumers were not so obsessed about saving money." There is one large group of consumers who don't care anything about cost, and that is consumers of government services.
OTOH, competition is the great genius of our free market system. The problem is that, in a world shrunk by technology, our businesses are hampered greatly by government interference-- taxes and regulations-- that our foreign competitors do not have. Remove those barriers and the US would again be the low cost producer, and we would all automatically buy US-made. Except for Chilean produce in the winter.
"According to this study, only 3 percent of millennials who have a high school diploma, who are working full time, and who are married before having children are poor. On the other hand, 53 percent of millennials who have not done these three things are poor."
Correlation/Causality?
Of the 3%, how many started out poor?
Of the 53%, which of the three missing factors is most common?
What is the definition of 'poor'?
This raises more questions than it answers.
Moose
Moose, perhaps it does raise questions, but first and foremost ought to be: Why has government welfare not fixed this obvious problem, by doing more to insure everybody DOES have the opportunity to do these three things? Why do we want to try a vastly expanded version-- UBI-- of an idea that to date has been a extraordinary failure?
Personally I think it is Causation for these millenials. I am pretty sure that being smart, working full time and in a committed relationship before having children are some key factors in being financially successful.
Now as for why other millenials fail in academics, have a hard time getting/keeping a full time job, have children early and/or have a hard time developing a long term relationship... That is more complicated.
How ever we do know that just giving them handouts is not the answer. That is part of why we have the current single parent poor household disaster..
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