4 ms·

Milton Friedman was a longtime advocate of a basic income, which in his precise parlance was called a Negative Income Tax. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpg

by malchow 11y ago

Milton Friedman was a longtime advocate of a basic income, which in his precise parlance was called a Negative Income Tax. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM) Leftist politicians have blocked this at several points, alas, although it is probably the most humane and effective method of delivering help to the poor. It also has the advantage of getting more people to, you know, actually file tax returns.

Florin_Andrei 11y ago
> Leftist politicians have blocked this at several points What was the rationale? It seems like a leftist issue to me.
- protomyth 11y ago
  I can imagine that control of how people spent the money (food stamps versus cash) would be a problem in the US. Programs versus direct payment does tend to show up as an issue. Look at the ND gaming compact with the tribes. The casino money can go into social service programs but not direct payments. I'll leave it to the reader to figure out how that has gone.
  - r00fus 11y ago
    DOesn't look like you really know why, but you're just asserting I think it's fiscal conservatives who are against it, and many Democrats as well. The "left" doesn't really exist politically in the US.. what you have remaining now is the non-rightists (mostly corporatist Dems).
    - protomyth 11y ago
      No, I know why. I spent a bit of time in the 90's doing the whole political thing. Programs and no-direct money were very important to the left (for the US definition). The right has its own issues with the concept of a lot of the programs.
      - r00fus 11y ago
        IF you know why, say so, with references. Your appeal to authority isn't very... appealing.
        protomyth 11y ago
        This isn't Wikipedia. I'm sorry I offended your worldview of what a person on the left's representatives believe, but that's my observation and experience. The ND Tribal Gaming Compact is probably as good as an example as possible, or maybe the paradox you can buy a burrito at a gas station with EBT but not use the microwave to cook it. I once thought it was fun to put in footnotes and huge lists of references[1], but that's just work, and frankly, just stopped being joyful. Hell, after getting down voted for actually showing the reference + quote on why a certain religion has the name it does and what one of the words mean, I realized it was for the best. In another thread, I thought about doing the work last night because I cannot believe someone would actually think a particular way[2]. 1) I think my best was 12 in a thread with someone who was putting an equal amount of effort - that was fun, informative, and respectful 2) living on a rez will give a nice overview of all the ways the US government tried to kill the Native Americans
      - dragonwriter 11y ago
        > Programs and no-direct money were very important to the left (for the US definition). As someone who also spent a "bit of time in the 1990s doing the whole political thing", that seems distorted. To the extent that was true of the party usually associated with "the left (for the US definition)" -- i.e., the Democratic Party -- it was largely because much of the Democratic Party was in a mode of strategic political "triangulation" by which it sought to mitigate traditional right-wing objections by presenting policies that could be sold out the gate as compromises, and also in part due to the fact -- especially after 1994 -- of resurgent Republican dominance which made it difficult, preference for triangulation aside, to get any traction for benefit program changes -- especially new programs or benefit increases -- that couldn't be sold as somehow instituting new limits or controls on the duration, kinds of people eligible, use of benefits, etc.
        11y ago
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > The "left" doesn't really exist politically in the US.. what you have remaining now is the non-rightists (mostly corporatist Dems). The left does exist in the US, but the US center is so far to the right that the parties look a like a center-right party and a far-right party most of the time, by international standards. OTOH, on the NIT, pure NITs have never reached any significant stage of the policy debate in the US, from either major party, so "leftist politicians" haven't shot it down (unless you define "leftist" so unusually as to include most of both major US parties.) Variations on NIT (which, certainly, compromise some of its key features, in each case) have been proposed by politicians of both major parties (including a form that passed as the Earned Income Tax Credit) -- and also several minor parties (a negative income tax was, e.g., part of the 2010 Green Party platform.)
- krupan 11y ago
  Basic income takes a huge amount of power away from the government.
- pc86 11y ago
  It is almost always coupled with eliminating all other financial forms of the social safety net.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - Florin_Andrei 11y ago
    Wow. Okay, that makes sense then, thanks.
- malchow 11y ago
  As a policy proposal, it is packaged with eliminating highly moderated welfare systems. That is, welfare systems that allow gov't policy to exert a lot of control over vendors, how/when/where aid is administered, and so forth. That and the fact that bureaucrats in Washington in charge of administering welfare aren't required anymore when it becomes merely a monetary transfer.
- Turing_Machine 11y ago
  It makes a lot more sense if you view the goal of leftist governments as paying leftist government workers, rather than actually helping the people allegedly being helped.
protomyth 11y ago
I thought basic income and negative income tax were two different concepts? Isn't negative income tax = minimum guaranteed income?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > I thought basic income and negative income tax were two different concepts? Unconditional basic income in a progressive tax system is equivalent to a form of negative income tax system. You can achieve exactly the results of the UBI as an NIT, if you set the parameters correctly. NIT looks income conditional (since additional income will reduce the tax subsidy by some proportion), but that's no different than additional income being taxable in a UBI system. (Though many NIT proposals, including, IIRC, Friedman's original, reduce the incentive to work compared to a simple UBI on top of the existing tax system because the effective tax rate on the first effective "bracket" of income on top of the UBI is very high -- 50% in Friedman's proposal -- which retains some of the seen-as-adverse effects of means-tested social benefit programs that NIT/UBIs are usually proposed as an alternative to.)
dragonwriter 11y ago
> Leftist politicians have blocked this at several points That's at best misleading and at worst flat-out false; a pure NIT has rarely reached the point of even a serious proposal, both left and right groups have proposed kinda-sorta-NITs, some of which have passed, some of which haven't, and the failures have been sometimes resulted from opposition from the right, sometimes to opposition from the left, and sometimes from opposition that is neither purely left or right (and sometimes to extraneous political reasons not directly and specifically tied to the NIT-related proposal itself.) It's worth noting that very close to the same time Friedman started promoting the idea, so did scholars from the liberal Brookings Institute. http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc1/NegativeIncomeTax.html http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc1/NegativeIncomeTax.html

by malchow 11y ago

Florin_Andrei 11y ago

> Leftist politicians have blocked this at several points What was the rationale? It seems like a leftist issue to me.

protomyth 11y ago
I can imagine that control of how people spent the money (food stamps versus cash) would be a problem in the US. Programs versus direct payment does tend to show up as an issue. Look at the ND gaming compact with the tribes. The casino money can go into social service programs but not direct payments. I'll leave it to the reader to figure out how that has gone.
- r00fus 11y ago
  DOesn't look like you really know why, but you're just asserting I think it's fiscal conservatives who are against it, and many Democrats as well. The "left" doesn't really exist politically in the US.. what you have remaining now is the non-rightists (mostly corporatist Dems).
  - protomyth 11y ago
    No, I know why. I spent a bit of time in the 90's doing the whole political thing. Programs and no-direct money were very important to the left (for the US definition). The right has its own issues with the concept of a lot of the programs.
    - r00fus 11y ago
      IF you know why, say so, with references. Your appeal to authority isn't very... appealing.
      - protomyth 11y ago
        This isn't Wikipedia. I'm sorry I offended your worldview of what a person on the left's representatives believe, but that's my observation and experience. The ND Tribal Gaming Compact is probably as good as an example as possible, or maybe the paradox you can buy a burrito at a gas station with EBT but not use the microwave to cook it. I once thought it was fun to put in footnotes and huge lists of references[1], but that's just work, and frankly, just stopped being joyful. Hell, after getting down voted for actually showing the reference + quote on why a certain religion has the name it does and what one of the words mean, I realized it was for the best. In another thread, I thought about doing the work last night because I cannot believe someone would actually think a particular way[2]. 1) I think my best was 12 in a thread with someone who was putting an equal amount of effort - that was fun, informative, and respectful 2) living on a rez will give a nice overview of all the ways the US government tried to kill the Native Americans
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > Programs and no-direct money were very important to the left (for the US definition). As someone who also spent a "bit of time in the 1990s doing the whole political thing", that seems distorted. To the extent that was true of the party usually associated with "the left (for the US definition)" -- i.e., the Democratic Party -- it was largely because much of the Democratic Party was in a mode of strategic political "triangulation" by which it sought to mitigate traditional right-wing objections by presenting policies that could be sold out the gate as compromises, and also in part due to the fact -- especially after 1994 -- of resurgent Republican dominance which made it difficult, preference for triangulation aside, to get any traction for benefit program changes -- especially new programs or benefit increases -- that couldn't be sold as somehow instituting new limits or controls on the duration, kinds of people eligible, use of benefits, etc.
      - 11y ago
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > The "left" doesn't really exist politically in the US.. what you have remaining now is the non-rightists (mostly corporatist Dems). The left does exist in the US, but the US center is so far to the right that the parties look a like a center-right party and a far-right party most of the time, by international standards. OTOH, on the NIT, pure NITs have never reached any significant stage of the policy debate in the US, from either major party, so "leftist politicians" haven't shot it down (unless you define "leftist" so unusually as to include most of both major US parties.) Variations on NIT (which, certainly, compromise some of its key features, in each case) have been proposed by politicians of both major parties (including a form that passed as the Earned Income Tax Credit) -- and also several minor parties (a negative income tax was, e.g., part of the 2010 Green Party platform.)
krupan 11y ago
Basic income takes a huge amount of power away from the government.
pc86 11y ago
It is almost always coupled with eliminating all other financial forms of the social safety net.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- Florin_Andrei 11y ago
  Wow. Okay, that makes sense then, thanks.
malchow 11y ago
As a policy proposal, it is packaged with eliminating highly moderated welfare systems. That is, welfare systems that allow gov't policy to exert a lot of control over vendors, how/when/where aid is administered, and so forth. That and the fact that bureaucrats in Washington in charge of administering welfare aren't required anymore when it becomes merely a monetary transfer.
Turing_Machine 11y ago
It makes a lot more sense if you view the goal of leftist governments as paying leftist government workers, rather than actually helping the people allegedly being helped.

protomyth 11y ago

I thought basic income and negative income tax were two different concepts? Isn't negative income tax = minimum guaranteed income?

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
dragonwriter 11y ago
> I thought basic income and negative income tax were two different concepts? Unconditional basic income in a progressive tax system is equivalent to a form of negative income tax system. You can achieve exactly the results of the UBI as an NIT, if you set the parameters correctly. NIT looks income conditional (since additional income will reduce the tax subsidy by some proportion), but that's no different than additional income being taxable in a UBI system. (Though many NIT proposals, including, IIRC, Friedman's original, reduce the incentive to work compared to a simple UBI on top of the existing tax system because the effective tax rate on the first effective "bracket" of income on top of the UBI is very high -- 50% in Friedman's proposal -- which retains some of the seen-as-adverse effects of means-tested social benefit programs that NIT/UBIs are usually proposed as an alternative to.)

dragonwriter 11y ago

> Leftist politicians have blocked this at several points That's at best misleading and at worst flat-out false; a pure NIT has rarely reached the point of even a serious proposal, both left and right groups have proposed kinda-sorta-NITs, some of which have passed, some of which haven't, and the failures have been sometimes resulted from opposition from the right, sometimes to opposition from the left, and sometimes from opposition that is neither purely left or right (and sometimes to extraneous political reasons not directly and specifically tied to the NIT-related proposal itself.) It's worth noting that very close to the same time Friedman started promoting the idea, so did scholars from the liberal Brookings Institute. http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc1/NegativeIncomeTax.html http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc1/NegativeIncomeTax.html