Posted on 12/15/2014 12:08:35 PM PST by PROCON
No matter what you do, you will still have the same number of people competing for the same amount of scarce goods and services. Write everyone a check and it will just cost that much more money. The only way to put a dent in poverty is through innovation... in other words the ability to produce more goods and services cheaper so that more of the pool competing for them can receive them.
No, you miss the point. There will be an EBT card with $10,000 loaded on it.
I agree that a simple cash payout would be more efficient than the myriad of programs and smaller transfer payments. I doubt it would be any more effective in combating the stated problem.
A basic income check will not replace any program ... it will be in addition to those.
I support a basic income program:
“Matt Zwolinski, founder of Bleeding Heart Libertarians, thinks basic income would be no worse than the current welfare state, which often stops providing benefits when recipients become employed. “As a result,” he says, “poor families often find that working more (or having a second adult work) simply doesn’t pay.” Zwolinski believes libertarians and small-government conservatives should be fighting to replace welfare with a basic income guarantee, which would shrink the government and promote personal independence—two tenants of their political beliefs.”
Our current welfare system pays people not to work. A basic income program is the opposite: it creates a true safety net through which people can never fall and if people work and earn more than their basic income, no problem. Pro work, pro family and from a conservative point of view it would cost way less than all of our welfare programs put together today do. And its the most efficient way to tackle poverty.
That's not true (and I'm not a moron) — though I do hate the inequality of Justice, and that often does seem to favor the .001% (i.e. the elite
).
;)
(I know, you were talking about Occupy Wall Street.)
That’s exactly what will happen.
And the ‘Rat has a name, the Granny from Massachusetts.
But there is an easier way to fix this. According to Wikipedia, the World Bank poverty line is $1.25 a day in 2005 dollars. Let’s write each current welfare recipient a check for $1.30 per day, call them rich, and end welfare as we know it!
Yeah, I know it’s a trick out of the ‘Rat play book, but it’s “for the children...”
I have randomly set my basic income as $350,000 a year. I want my check.
If half that money were just given to the poor as checks they’d all be rich. Gov. bureaucracies don’t account for all the money the poor didn’t get either even though it’s a lot. Somebody been skimmin’ a whole lotta dough.
It supersede both capitalism and socialism. It works in Alaska but the amount of payments from the oil revenue program would have to be substantially boosted to create a basic income program:
“But even in the U.S, basic income has a forebear. In Alaska, the state’s oil revenues are divided equally between every resident. The checks written at the end of the year usually amount to somewhere around $1,000 per person, hardly enough for a household to live on, but the subsidy does seem to positively affect Alaskans: economist Scott Goldsmith calculated that this is the equivalent to adding an entire new industry, or 10,000 new jobs, to the Alaskan economy. The model boasts nearly a 90 percent approval rating and a slew of fierce political advocates, including those, like Alaska’s former Republican Governor Wally Hickel, who see it as a blueprint for a new, superior economic policy. “From common ownership of our land and our resources, has emerged a new model for modern society,” he said in 2012. “We call ourselves the Owner State. And what we own is the commons. We believe our model surpasses both capitalism and socialism.”
https://www.linkedin.com/pub/betsy-isaacson/98/295/645
This is what she's aspiring to...
Opportunities Betsy is looking for:
Joining a nonprofit board
Skills-based volunteering (pro bono consulting)
With a resume like hers how can we possibly not follow her advice?
(I know, you were talking about Occupy Wall Street.)
__________________________________________________
No, no. I was talking about you. Personally. Meant to ping you. Just kidding.
Proposals like this never factor in the hundreds of thousands of welfare workers who’d be put out of work...
Doesn’t say much for the value of a Harvard education.
Obviously never experienced any privation in her life,
telling the rest of us how simple it is to achieve heaven on earth.
We can’t end poverty. We might be able to reduce it with incentives to work, but we will never end it.
Oh believe me I know that. They’ll just continue to expand the current programs.
For those on this forum, over the past ten years or so, that have argued the benefits of the so-called Fair-tax, then what you are arguing for is what the international socialists call a BIG (Basic Income Guaranty) which is a basic income check for everybody.
The idea of the Fair-tax (I call it the Fart Tax as it taxes those who have retired living on income from investments that already have been taxed where the IRA’s were to be withdrawn with no taxes) is that it is a consumption tax, at quite a high rate, in order to fund the government. Everyone would get a basic “prebate” every month to offset basic needs. Since that would be figured in there would be no tax exemptions for essential items such as food and clothing. The understanding is “rich” people and the “Boomers” stole from the people for so long so now we will take them to the cleaners.
Many have argued it as a conservative idea but in reality it is a socialist plan to establish a BIG.
The other thing, does anybody wish to argue that the laws will not eradicate all income taxing schemes? What does one do with generation skipping trusts? What about international consumption? Will the USA require every nation in the world to remit a tax on spending by US citizens?
One other thing; how many people here wish the government know exactly where you live so to be able to send you a monthly check (most likely it would be EBT but ten years ago it was a check)? And, how much corruption will there be regarding family size, dependents, etc?
Unlike you, I believe people know what to do with their money than any bureaucrat.
A $20,000 basic income would decouple income from work but then the rich already live that way and with a job based economy disappearing, it may be a practical solution to a world where jobs are being replaced by off-shoring and automation.
People will still want to work but not for a living but simply to contribute something to society. Ironically enough, that brings Karl Marx’s famous vision of the free person in a Communist society into realization - all without the oppressive hand of central planning or wealth redistribution.
Living on $2 a day?
I smell a rat. The po’ folk I see walking around spend more than that on soda pop at 7-eleven.
It said per person per day. A family of 4 could live on $8 of rice and beans per day I would suppose.
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