Posted on 12/15/2014 12:08:35 PM PST by PROCON
“Over, the last 50 years, the government spent more than $16 trillion to fight poverty. “
If that money wasn’t spent would we be only $2 trillion in debt? /s
so every baby is worth 10 k per year.
I’m still waiting for my annual $2500 0bamaDontCare Check.
“Poverty” is defined as a percentage of income below the average. Therefore, it is impossible to eliminate “poverty,” because there will always be 20% that are at the bottom of income distribution.
= = = = = = = = = = = =
In the same vein, the reason ‘min wage’ doesn’t work.
If minimum wage has the desired effect, to raise the spending power of workers, that would mean that EVERYONE would have to get a raise the same percentage as the min wage.(I think Unions have this written in)
As long as people get FIRED, let go, quota ed, downsized or whatever word they want to use, the ‘reason’ for the min wage is gone as, in effect, the unemployed level will rise.
If EVERYONE gets say a raise to 15 per hour, including the guy stocking shelves in the store that means the price of the product should go up accordingly.
It is costing you MORE to sell the same product,from the lowest picker in the field to the steak on the table that started with the lowest picker in the field. SO EVERY step of the way it went ‘up’ to accommodate the ‘raise’.
Like when the power co says your newest rate raise is only 3cents per day, say, Ok, I will mail you a check every day for 3cents to cover the raise.
In a true sense, the rate would either be dropped OR they would just quit telling one how much the raise was on a daily basis.
Does anybody think we have immigration (invasion) issues now? Just wait until all you have to do is to arrive on the doorstep of USA and get a check equal to the top income earners of 15 or 20% of the entire world workforce. Oh, what the hell am I thinking.....they already do!!
I don’t really see any difference in direct paying verses paying through many different federal programs. The moneys already there. The “War on Poverty” is certainly not working.
I sure don’t know. The biggest thing to get over would be the mindset that “I get paid for not working”. And also, “they get paid for not working”. Hell, “they” do anyway....Also, every family would get a check. Not just poverty level. Maybe some means testing.
Then again, this could be kinda like opening up Pandora’s Box. Something needs to be done about our Entitlement system. $1,000,000,000,000,000(is that enough zeros?) a year?
Your description of the thinking behind the FairTax “prebate” is.. colorful... but inaccurate.
The concept is that the necessities should not be subject to tax. But rather than define specific items that are tax-exempt, which is a minefiled for multiple reasons (two most dominant: 1) say we exempt food... which foods and what quantities? Hamburger but not steak? Crab but not lobster?; 2) who are we to decide what is “necessary” in a one-size-fits-all model?), the decision is to use the poverty line as the amount for “necessities” and to provide a tax credit for the amount of sales tax on that amount.
Note that calling this a “basic income guarantee” would be like calling the personal exemption and standard deduction of your income tax a “basic income guarantee”, because that’s exactly what this would parallel and what it replaces.
Just because two things have superficially similar outcomes does not mean that the two things are in any way similar.
About equal to our national debt.
That said, I don’t see it going anywhere. Both liberals and conservatives don’t trust poor people and they want to treat them like children.
Plus our huge social service bureaucracies will never voluntarily relinquish their power to run people’s lives.
That is more than a theory it has been done in the real world. A Tibetan king, distressed by the disparity between the poor and the rich, ordered that all wealth and property be divided equally amongst the population. It was and one year later those who had been wealthy were wealthy again and those who had been poor were poor again. The king ordered that it be done again. One year later the same result. The king ordered it done a third time and again within a year the rich were rich and the poor were poor again.
He was one of the early Buddhist kings who did this because he wanted to end the suffering of the poor. He learned that people have their own karma which they have to work out for themselves it can't be "fixed" for them. That is the purpose of retelling the story to Buddhist students today.
Whether you believe in karma or not it was proved three times over that it's not possible to end poverty by giving the poor wealth taken from the wealthy.
Good examples.
I wish.
I hear the results of 3+ generations of welfare from my Saintly Spouse who teaches their children.
I KNOW they would completely blow the cash within days of receiving it.
Then what?
The unfortunate situation is that doling out the money via Section 8 Housing, Medicaid, etc. is that the roof and doctoring will actually be paid for, rather that go straight to the casino.
Yes, it IS that bad. The underclass will blow every dime you give them as cash, and we will be left with all the problems we currently fund through a thousand programs.
The problem is not the MECHANISM of payment. Indeed, I project that the proposed new MECHANISM will merely increase total outlays as the effect above takes hold.
The problem is the EXISTENCE of any government sponsored welfare program. If welfare were only a private (church based) enterprise, it would work to get people from learned helplessness and addiction toward productive citizenry.
Allow me to amend your suggestion in a way where we may then agree:
I believe people know what to do with the money THEY EARN better than any bureaucrat.
Over a longer time period, it would be observed that some of the rich eventually became poor, as a consequence of either poor decision-making or accidental circumstances (illness, natural disaster). In the same period, some of the formerly poor would become rich, because of good decision-making or good fortune.
this idea keeps coming back, and it won’t work
$2 a day... not in this country
This type of spending by the government that guarantees a minimum income is consumption expenditure, which is destructive to capital accumulation, which has a negative effect on economic progress, which is necessary for increasing prosperity for the country as a whole. The institutions of capitalism and productive expenditure is what leads to increased capital accumulation and technological progress, which leads to economic progress and prosperity.
>A basic income check? And in two years when inflation catches up to those worthless basic income checks and poverty is WORSE and not better - then what?<
Exactly. Does anyone think the higher costs of college, food, health insurance and nursing home prices are not influenced by entitlements to a large segment of the population? Nursing home prices, in particular, are designed to impoverish everyone of even modest means as quickly and as efficiently as possible.
Its just like the idiocy over raising the minimum wage.
You want $15.00 an hour to flip burgers and mop floors?
Great.
And when that hamburger costs $10.00 per pound and the price of that mop is at $49.00, then what?
Raise the minimum wage again?
Suuuuurrre.
Anyone who took Econ 101 should be able to spot two huge flaws in any scheme like this:
#1 - Poverty is defined as below a certain percentage of the average income in a particular area. If you give everyone a “minimum income”, it raises the “average income”, and thus raises the poverty line. So you will be trying to hit a moving target.
#2 - Giving everyone a “minimum income” would increase the amount of money being spent in the economy, which would increase the cost of goods for everyone. Not only might you fail to lift the poor out of poverty, but you could very well end up sending more people into poverty by destroying the purchasing power of their money.
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