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These arguments are specious. Most Libertarian proponents of a guaranteed income don't favor it because it will "save money," but because it's the least econom
by jfarmer 13y ago
These arguments are specious.
Most Libertarian proponents of a guaranteed income don't favor it because it will "save money," but because it's the least economically distortive way of redistributing wealth. The arguments goes, "Well, as long we're going to be handing out money, we should do it in a way that minimizes the number of strange incentives." There are also ways of implementing a guaranteed income that don't involve mailing a bunch of checks to people every month, e.g., a negative income tax.
Overall the article appears to be arguing against a particular and very naïve implementation of a guaranteed income.
- philwelch 13y agoSo how does a negative income tax get implemented, you mail people a "refund" after they file their taxes for 0 income for the previous year? What do they do until then?
- ds9 13y agoWell here is one way it could be implemented, and this would also solve the issue of cost. Imagine it's offset against earnings. That is, if you earn more or less than the benefit amount, you get paid the difference - in one case by the employer, in the other case by the government. You can see how this solves the cost problem: the society overall is already paying the total cost is of whatever people are currently paid; this just puts a floor on the range. Clearly this would get rid of much of the extreme inequality: it would amount to a kind of minimum wage; the net effect would be to give workers a larger share, and more bargaining power, and leave less for the upper-middle and the 1% - at no more cost than the current system.