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The Pragmatic Libertarian Case for a Basic Income Guarantee

57 points by rosser 12y ago

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
justizin 12y ago
This is shockingly sane for a libertarian think tank.
ckluis 12y ago
I could get behind a program like that. Especially, if coupled with a flat tax on all income after the BIG.
- lloyddobbler 12y ago
  This is the key. As the author describes eliminating things like the mortgage deduction - but if you implement a BIG while still leaving legislators the ability to levy taxes against certain constituents over others, we remain at exactly the same place we are now. The Fairtax proposal at http://www.fairtax.org http://www.fairtax.org has long advocated a lesser sort of BIG (called the 'prebate,' which would give everyone a check for their standard deduction each month to avoid people paying taxes on essential goods). After that, all would pay a flat sales tax on goods. Prices of goods would only increase minimally, given the absence of tax compliance costs for businesses. One could conceivably expand this type of BIG and do away with the welfare programs altogether. But without doing away with the IRS, the system remains corrupt. Sadly, neither of these proposals will ever happen, because both would require the federal government give up its ability to pick and choose to which constituents and special interests they dole out favors.
- mjevans 12y ago
  Taxes (excluding incentives / disincentives to do things as the collective (government) feels benefits society) should take a single exponential curve, a few min gives me this as a starting point: Taxes = PreTaxIncome * (1-(Ratio^((PreTaxIncome - BasicIncome) / BasicIncome))) * subtract basic living income from total * an otherwise equally applied curve where you /always/ take home more for making more (irrespective of how you made it) BUT the more you make the higher the percentage becomes tax. You're taking home disproportionately more of a society therefore your obligations to the society that allows you to make that much are also larger. If you're waiting for some background task and want to experiment use a spreadsheet program and the following: B1 = Ratio A2 = MinimumIncome A3+ = HigherIncomes B2+ = =(1-POWER($B$1,(A2-$A$2)/$A$2))*A2 C2+ = =B2/A2 D2+ = =(A2-B2)/$A$2 I'm not super happy about this particular curve as it's been too long since taking math courses for me to remember how to build in controls that make it easier to shape based on more meaningful numbers.
nickff 12y ago
I have many objections to basic income proposals such as this, but I would be very interested to see some states implement this sort of policy, so that we might observe the result. Unfortunately, I cannot imagine the federal government eliminating any of the existing Social Security or other wealth transfer programs, and they would likely obscure the findings of the basic income test program. The best test I could imagine (to compare existing programs to the basic income,) would be for the federal government to grant waivers for all social welfare programs to some states, give them the equivalent amount of money, and have them each implement their own basic income program (at a level they see fit, with the state paying for any cost difference).
- mikeash 12y ago
  Alaska already has, although not at a scale large enough to make a particularly big difference.
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    Alaska distributes oil royalties to citizens of the state. If the wells suddenly dried up, so would the checks.
    - Turing_Machine 12y ago
      Nope. The checks come from the Alaska Permanent Fund. While the original funding source was indeed oil (and new oil revenue continues to be paid into it), the checks come from returns on investing past oil revenue, not current oil revenue. If the oil stopped flowing tomorrow, the Permanent Fund would still be there. Alaska was fortunate in having a government (at least at that time) that actually planned for the future. http://www.apfc.org/home/Content/aboutFund/aboutPermFund.cfm http://www.apfc.org/home/Content/aboutFund/aboutPermFund.cfm
- JimBarrows 12y ago
  40 some odd countries have, and it's working.
carsongross 12y ago
From a libertarian perspective, I've always thought that the best aspect of a basic income guarantee is that it allows monetary expansion to occur broadly, eliminating the banking sector's advantage as an early receiver of monetary inflation. That, by itself, is a huge step forward and a rare place where both libertarians and keynesians can find common ground. On the other hand, it goes right at the heart of both the banking system and centralized political power. Which is why, sadly, it will never happen.
- nickff 12y ago
  You are quite right that the basic income would help monetarists and Keynsians increase the money supply more evenly, with less distributive problems, but I would not say that this is good from a purely libertarian perspective. Many libertarians believe that free banking is a much better system than our current system, and they would criticize the points you make as being of little benefit, and mostly being a distraction. I think you make some good points, but I would have to think about this for a while before I could come to a firm opinion (because this is the first time I have heard your very interesting reasoning).
ObligatoryRef 12y ago
I like some of the arguments being made here. I would just have a few questions: If the program involves no strings attached grants, and it is meant to replace existing welfare systems, what happens to people who blow their money on nonessentials? Is there a secondary net for them, or are they allowed to starve? What about bad parents who take the cash without providing for their children? I understand that these questions are just as valid with our current system, but is there a way to address them within this new framework?
- VLM 12y ago
  Right now, today, we have women trading WIC products for alcohol and drugs. This isn't going to really change anything WRT that. (I'm in the submitting too fast punishment pen. Source for my claim is having worked retail supermarket as a starving student, and having friends / coworkers / neighbors doing just this. You are correct that it is hyperbole that everyone who can't stomach 3 cans per week of juicy-juice blueberry corn syrup flavor psuedo-juice per week is a crack addict, lots of poor people just trying to get by.)
  - jobu 12y ago
    Any source for that claim? I've heard things like that spouted by pundits, but they never seem to have any credible evidence.
- AndrewDucker 12y ago
  Personally, I'd pay it out on a regular basis, so people who blow one week can still get it the next.
  - jjoonathan 12y ago
    This is Milton Friedman's proposed solution as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM
  - scarmig 12y ago
    Another key point is making loans offered on the basis of future basic income allowances unenforceable.
VLM 12y ago
A lot of administrators and paper pushers are not going to be happy. Maybe one way to fix it is daily direct deposit. That would keep the paper shufflers quite busy and cut back on scams and foolishness. I would be moderately amused at an idea of modification of the IRS tax code WRT gifts and being able to delegate my income. I am doing really well financially right now, so just give my $10K to my mom as a tax free gift. If you don't make it tax free lets be realistic I'll just avoid tax codes anyway. $10K would mean a heck of a lot more to her than to me. I suspect when my kids enter college if the whole scam hasn't collapsed by then, they'd find my share plus my wife's share plus maybe auntie's share to be quite handy. Currently you could run into IRS issues WRT taxable income if many family members start gifting one college student. (edited to add, I just thought of one problem with delegation: What boils down to extortion, and probably blackmail. You'll know everyone will be vulnerable.)
mikeash 12y ago
It occurs to me that single-payer socialized medicine is basically a smaller, more specific version of Basic Income. Instead of trying to figure out how to get health care to people who can't afford it, just provide it to everyone, problem solved. It seems to have worked well there, which implies good things about Basic Income. Better, I'd say, since many of the problems people see with socialized medicine, real or imagined, don't apply to a plain cash grant.
- roc 12y ago
  This is actually a notable problem with the BIG, as presented. As it includes Medicaid spending as federal benefit spending (and likely PPACA subsidies -- but I haven't gotten that far in the footnotes) the $10k would seemingly amount to just covering every American household's private-market insurance premiums (with no regard to whether they needed them covered and further handing 'free money' to healthy young childless households whose premiums would be much lower). And without being structured as Medicaid, it would abandon the other (cost-controlling/bureaucracy-reducing/waste-reducing) financial benefits of a single payer health system -- benefits over the private market that Medicaid actually delivers (according to numerous studies). So the end result is that poor people would see their net benefits ruthlessly slashed, (good luck buying food and shelter after you use that 10k for market-rate insurance) all so that middle-class people can receive a stipend that they don't need and a decrease in federal-dollar-per-hypothetical-unit-of-healthcare efficiency. The most-charitable read of this proposal, is that it's the result of a naive person doing "black box math" where they seek some mathematical ideal in the re-arrangement of government payments -- without any regard to the benefits being provided, the cost-effectiveness of those benefits and whether the rearrangement is a practical improvement. I mean, if we're spending $20k per poor person, and children are still going hungry, under what logic would redistributing it as 10k to every single person see any sort of improvement in the ultimate goals of things like keeping children from going hungry? To not see the massive benefit cut to these people that we've currently defined as needing help, we'd have to assume that for every dollar in tangible benefits received by the poor, there's a dollar in bureaucratic overhead. And why on earth would we accept such an implicit assumption, when the ultimate source of all these numbers -- the CBO -- has regularly assessed such administrative costs and never finds such waste? [1] [1] e.g. SNAP, pointed to regularly in the CATO document source, has administrative overhead of less than 4.5% of total federal cost. So if the average SNAP-receiving household is getting $287/mo, the overhead is $13/mo. Under this proposal, food money going to the currently-snap-receiving household would drop to $143/mo, with $15/mo going to 9 households that don't need SNAP. In the name of "saving" that $13/mo. Most of us would look at the infeasibility of a household feeding itself for $143/mo and see their own $15/mo as a more egregious waste than the original $13. Which, cynically speaking, is likely to be a feature. Following such a programs initiation, it would be trivial to get voters behind the proposal to cut their own taxes by $15/mo, to save them the overhead of having the government take the money only to give it back as a stipend they don't need. The end result would be the massive benefit cut and the reduced taxes. http://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program-snap http://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/supplemental-nutrition-assistance... (EDIT: fleshed out SNAP example)
mtanski 12y ago
I've come around to generally agree with the basic income guarantee. Both in premise of the problem and how it tackles the. What I don't believe is that the problem is tenable in the United States. At least, I can't see it happening today. For starters there is a whole portion of the population that will see this as people free loading. This a sizable part of the population that believes all "hand-outs" are bad even if it ends up saving us money in the long run. Second, the government being the largest employer (second largest I believe if we elude the military.) I have a hard time seeing this happen due to political pressure since a sizable number of jobs would be cut... since they are no longer needed to administer these complex programs. That's not a winning election proposition. Next, take into account local impact of places where government is close to the only employer. Look how much people fight to prevent military base closing in their district; doesn't matter where on the political/fiscal ideology they stand. Finally, there's the impact to the private sector which has cropped up to administer, provide or execute some of these programs. In a perfect world states would be better able to deal some of the local welfare issues. That brings an interesting opportunity for the federal government to vastly simplify welfare programs in something along the lines of BIG (and it self in the process). And then leaving local issues to the states. Poverty can look very different in NYC compared to Tennessee. Other types of welfare issues only are a major concern in some states and not others. It's could be a very... American solution to the problem. The downside is that some states can't be counted on doing the right thing (simple example: Civil Rights). Side node: I am not a libertarian, or anything official for that matter.
- aaron-lebo 12y ago
  I think you are right. I like the ideas behind it: it empowers people, decentralizes power, could spur innovation, and is actually something people on the far left and far right can agree upon. I also think it is hopelessly naive. You are talking about a change that would dismantle numerous massive government programs and completely restructure social and economic life in this country. Not only, as you pointed out, is that going to be very hard to push through both to the populace and within the parties themselves, but it is way too hand wavy. Every grand political idea has promised, "just do this and it will fix everything". But there's always unintended consequences, and in a policy this far-reaching, those possible consequences are wide-ranging. It just isn't going to happen without some massive shift in political opinion in the next few decades.
VLM 12y ago
One problem: Corrupt financialization. The types that financialize everything to make the poor poorer and rich richer will end up making contracts abusing the downtrodden along the lines of "sign over rights to your B.I. for the rest of your life and we'll give your child a kidney transplant, otherwise too bad for your kid, or maybe we'll give you a subprime used car this one time or maybe enough cash to pay off that legal bill" It'll be quite a feeding frenzy for both the legal and illegal crooks for a little while. (edited to add I think you'll also on the other side need some level of bankruptcy reform... lets say the cost to me of doing business while in bankruptcy is less than $10K annually... so you'd have to be an idiot to give me a mortgage loan because I could structure things quite carefully to get it for free. Or if not normal expenses like that, the usual medical industrial complex scam of huge bills for things not covered (entirely) by insurance.)
- pavel_lishin 12y ago
  Does extortion not exist today?
- justizin 12y ago
  isn't it typical in bankruptcy where your debt is forgiven completely that you can't hold onto any asset like a home? this seems like something people could already do, and which is already protected against.
kazinator 12y ago
If one problem is that subsidized people have a disincentive to work more, that can be solved by writing everyone a check, regardless of their income level. This way, even if you have the check, any amount of work you do will supplement that check, rather than make you ineligible for part of all of the check. "From each according to his abilities, to each according to a simple flat per capita rate"
- baddox 12y ago
  > that can be solved by writing everyone a check, regardless of their income level. I believe that is an explicit part of the definition of "basic income." One proposal I've read is that it must be applied for or opted into somehow, so wealthier people can simply refrain from accepting if they choose.
- seanflyon 12y ago
  "Basic Income Guarantee" refers to Basic Income (writing everyone a check) and not Guaranteed Income (writing a check to those bellow the threshold).
jetblackio 12y ago
I like this idea, but one issue I see is that, while 95% of people could use an extra 10k, the real cost of welfare comes from those few who have major medical needs, and that 10k would do nothing for them, at least as currently outlined here. There are always going to a portion of society who will need a disproportionate amount of financial assistance, and this doesn't seem to take that in to account. It seems likely that after problems arise, we would implement some other form of welfare on top of this program, and wouldn't have really gained anything. That's my quick assumption anyway.
- baddox 12y ago
  > the real cost of welfare comes from those few who have major medical needs Are large per-person medical expenses a significant portion of total US welfare spending? Do you have a link to that data?
  - devilshaircut 12y ago
    This isn't the metric you are looking for, but I believe the basis of this argument hinges on the proposition that financial need for medical expenses varies from demographic to demographic. I believe this is trivially demonstrated (statistically and from a common-sense standpoint) by looking at different age segments. Older people (baby boomers come to mind now) certainly do need more healthcare than younger people as a product of aging. Citation from 2008: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/05/why-does-us-health-care-cost-so-much-part-iii-an-aging-population-isnt-the-reason/ http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/05/why-does-us-hea... Does that mean they would deserve a greater financial allowance? That is for the person designing the policy to decide; the article suggests no. I offer no opinion on this. My main question is ... having read the article, I don't actually see the libertarian argument here at all. It seems to say it is simply "more libertarian" than what we currently have (with supporting arguments like "smaller government", "cheaper overhead", etc.) - but ultimately, the spirit of this proposal doesn't seem to be in line with these values at all.
    - lutorm 12y ago
oldmanjay 12y ago
i'm in favor of something like a basic income, and my reasoning in part comes down to something very much like that in the article - we are already subsidizing people, and we're doing it badly with political overtones, so let's just get rid of the crap and make the system work. I'd like it to go hand-in-hand with other sanity measures, like eliminating the gov't agency habit of foolishly spending their "leftover" money at the end of the fiscal year to avoid budget reductions the next year. It's a clear demonstration that the money isn't needed, and I'd rather see an ordinary citizen get to decide how that money is spent, because the gov't is just throwing it to well-heeled contractors who don't really need it.
harryh 12y ago
Every discussion that doesn't confront the actual math of how it would work is silly. 300M * 10k = 3 Trillion Dollars This is greater than the total revenue of the Federal government in 2013.
aturek 12y ago
I'm sorry if this is a dumb question, but what countries currently do some sort of basic income? A quick search on Google/Wikipedia turns up no actual implementations
k-mcgrady 12y ago
Excellent article. One of the things that throws me off libertarianism is the lack of social welfare. I come from the land of free health care and education so minimal social welfare is a strange concept to me and, I say this without exaggeration, seems almost evil. However a BIG is something I would definitely go for. The reduced bureaucracy, better flexibility for people to use the money as they wish, potential economical benefits etc. are all great. I still think I'd take a reduced BIG in exchange for some sort of free health care (if we got rid of that we'd just be shifting the bureaucracy from government to insurance companies) but something where consumers have more choice and we have a more competitive market.
mrfusion 12y ago
He forgot to mention that ideally minimum wage should go away under a strong BIG. Since people are getting a basic living wage from the BIG, there is no need to force employers to pay one. I think that would help make the idea compelling to libertarians. And it should address some of the concerns of a big causing less employment.

57 points by rosser 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

justizin 12y ago

This is shockingly sane for a libertarian think tank.

ckluis 12y ago

I could get behind a program like that. Especially, if coupled with a flat tax on all income after the BIG.

lloyddobbler 12y ago
This is the key. As the author describes eliminating things like the mortgage deduction - but if you implement a BIG while still leaving legislators the ability to levy taxes against certain constituents over others, we remain at exactly the same place we are now. The Fairtax proposal at http://www.fairtax.org http://www.fairtax.org has long advocated a lesser sort of BIG (called the 'prebate,' which would give everyone a check for their standard deduction each month to avoid people paying taxes on essential goods). After that, all would pay a flat sales tax on goods. Prices of goods would only increase minimally, given the absence of tax compliance costs for businesses. One could conceivably expand this type of BIG and do away with the welfare programs altogether. But without doing away with the IRS, the system remains corrupt. Sadly, neither of these proposals will ever happen, because both would require the federal government give up its ability to pick and choose to which constituents and special interests they dole out favors.
mjevans 12y ago
Taxes (excluding incentives / disincentives to do things as the collective (government) feels benefits society) should take a single exponential curve, a few min gives me this as a starting point: Taxes = PreTaxIncome * (1-(Ratio^((PreTaxIncome - BasicIncome) / BasicIncome))) * subtract basic living income from total * an otherwise equally applied curve where you /always/ take home more for making more (irrespective of how you made it) BUT the more you make the higher the percentage becomes tax. You're taking home disproportionately more of a society therefore your obligations to the society that allows you to make that much are also larger. If you're waiting for some background task and want to experiment use a spreadsheet program and the following: B1 = Ratio A2 = MinimumIncome A3+ = HigherIncomes B2+ = =(1-POWER($B$1,(A2-$A$2)/$A$2))*A2 C2+ = =B2/A2 D2+ = =(A2-B2)/$A$2 I'm not super happy about this particular curve as it's been too long since taking math courses for me to remember how to build in controls that make it easier to shape based on more meaningful numbers.

nickff 12y ago

I have many objections to basic income proposals such as this, but I would be very interested to see some states implement this sort of policy, so that we might observe the result. Unfortunately, I cannot imagine the federal government eliminating any of the existing Social Security or other wealth transfer programs, and they would likely obscure the findings of the basic income test program. The best test I could imagine (to compare existing programs to the basic income,) would be for the federal government to grant waivers for all social welfare programs to some states, give them the equivalent amount of money, and have them each implement their own basic income program (at a level they see fit, with the state paying for any cost difference).

mikeash 12y ago
Alaska already has, although not at a scale large enough to make a particularly big difference.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  Alaska distributes oil royalties to citizens of the state. If the wells suddenly dried up, so would the checks.
  - Turing_Machine 12y ago
    Nope. The checks come from the Alaska Permanent Fund. While the original funding source was indeed oil (and new oil revenue continues to be paid into it), the checks come from returns on investing past oil revenue, not current oil revenue. If the oil stopped flowing tomorrow, the Permanent Fund would still be there. Alaska was fortunate in having a government (at least at that time) that actually planned for the future. http://www.apfc.org/home/Content/aboutFund/aboutPermFund.cfm http://www.apfc.org/home/Content/aboutFund/aboutPermFund.cfm
JimBarrows 12y ago
40 some odd countries have, and it's working.

carsongross 12y ago

From a libertarian perspective, I've always thought that the best aspect of a basic income guarantee is that it allows monetary expansion to occur broadly, eliminating the banking sector's advantage as an early receiver of monetary inflation. That, by itself, is a huge step forward and a rare place where both libertarians and keynesians can find common ground. On the other hand, it goes right at the heart of both the banking system and centralized political power. Which is why, sadly, it will never happen.

nickff 12y ago
You are quite right that the basic income would help monetarists and Keynsians increase the money supply more evenly, with less distributive problems, but I would not say that this is good from a purely libertarian perspective. Many libertarians believe that free banking is a much better system than our current system, and they would criticize the points you make as being of little benefit, and mostly being a distraction. I think you make some good points, but I would have to think about this for a while before I could come to a firm opinion (because this is the first time I have heard your very interesting reasoning).

ObligatoryRef 12y ago

I like some of the arguments being made here. I would just have a few questions: If the program involves no strings attached grants, and it is meant to replace existing welfare systems, what happens to people who blow their money on nonessentials? Is there a secondary net for them, or are they allowed to starve? What about bad parents who take the cash without providing for their children? I understand that these questions are just as valid with our current system, but is there a way to address them within this new framework?

VLM 12y ago
Right now, today, we have women trading WIC products for alcohol and drugs. This isn't going to really change anything WRT that. (I'm in the submitting too fast punishment pen. Source for my claim is having worked retail supermarket as a starving student, and having friends / coworkers / neighbors doing just this. You are correct that it is hyperbole that everyone who can't stomach 3 cans per week of juicy-juice blueberry corn syrup flavor psuedo-juice per week is a crack addict, lots of poor people just trying to get by.)
- jobu 12y ago
  Any source for that claim? I've heard things like that spouted by pundits, but they never seem to have any credible evidence.
AndrewDucker 12y ago
Personally, I'd pay it out on a regular basis, so people who blow one week can still get it the next.
- jjoonathan 12y ago
  This is Milton Friedman's proposed solution as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM
- scarmig 12y ago
  Another key point is making loans offered on the basis of future basic income allowances unenforceable.

VLM 12y ago

A lot of administrators and paper pushers are not going to be happy. Maybe one way to fix it is daily direct deposit. That would keep the paper shufflers quite busy and cut back on scams and foolishness. I would be moderately amused at an idea of modification of the IRS tax code WRT gifts and being able to delegate my income. I am doing really well financially right now, so just give my $10K to my mom as a tax free gift. If you don't make it tax free lets be realistic I'll just avoid tax codes anyway. $10K would mean a heck of a lot more to her than to me. I suspect when my kids enter college if the whole scam hasn't collapsed by then, they'd find my share plus my wife's share plus maybe auntie's share to be quite handy. Currently you could run into IRS issues WRT taxable income if many family members start gifting one college student. (edited to add, I just thought of one problem with delegation: What boils down to extortion, and probably blackmail. You'll know everyone will be vulnerable.)

mikeash 12y ago

It occurs to me that single-payer socialized medicine is basically a smaller, more specific version of Basic Income. Instead of trying to figure out how to get health care to people who can't afford it, just provide it to everyone, problem solved. It seems to have worked well there, which implies good things about Basic Income. Better, I'd say, since many of the problems people see with socialized medicine, real or imagined, don't apply to a plain cash grant.

roc 12y ago
This is actually a notable problem with the BIG, as presented. As it includes Medicaid spending as federal benefit spending (and likely PPACA subsidies -- but I haven't gotten that far in the footnotes) the $10k would seemingly amount to just covering every American household's private-market insurance premiums (with no regard to whether they needed them covered and further handing 'free money' to healthy young childless households whose premiums would be much lower). And without being structured as Medicaid, it would abandon the other (cost-controlling/bureaucracy-reducing/waste-reducing) financial benefits of a single payer health system -- benefits over the private market that Medicaid actually delivers (according to numerous studies). So the end result is that poor people would see their net benefits ruthlessly slashed, (good luck buying food and shelter after you use that 10k for market-rate insurance) all so that middle-class people can receive a stipend that they don't need and a decrease in federal-dollar-per-hypothetical-unit-of-healthcare efficiency. The most-charitable read of this proposal, is that it's the result of a naive person doing "black box math" where they seek some mathematical ideal in the re-arrangement of government payments -- without any regard to the benefits being provided, the cost-effectiveness of those benefits and whether the rearrangement is a practical improvement. I mean, if we're spending $20k per poor person, and children are still going hungry, under what logic would redistributing it as 10k to every single person see any sort of improvement in the ultimate goals of things like keeping children from going hungry? To not see the massive benefit cut to these people that we've currently defined as needing help, we'd have to assume that for every dollar in tangible benefits received by the poor, there's a dollar in bureaucratic overhead. And why on earth would we accept such an implicit assumption, when the ultimate source of all these numbers -- the CBO -- has regularly assessed such administrative costs and never finds such waste? [1] [1] e.g. SNAP, pointed to regularly in the CATO document source, has administrative overhead of less than 4.5% of total federal cost. So if the average SNAP-receiving household is getting $287/mo, the overhead is $13/mo. Under this proposal, food money going to the currently-snap-receiving household would drop to $143/mo, with $15/mo going to 9 households that don't need SNAP. In the name of "saving" that $13/mo. Most of us would look at the infeasibility of a household feeding itself for $143/mo and see their own $15/mo as a more egregious waste than the original $13. Which, cynically speaking, is likely to be a feature. Following such a programs initiation, it would be trivial to get voters behind the proposal to cut their own taxes by $15/mo, to save them the overhead of having the government take the money only to give it back as a stipend they don't need. The end result would be the massive benefit cut and the reduced taxes. http://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program-snap http://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/supplemental-nutrition-assistance... (EDIT: fleshed out SNAP example)

mtanski 12y ago

I've come around to generally agree with the basic income guarantee. Both in premise of the problem and how it tackles the. What I don't believe is that the problem is tenable in the United States. At least, I can't see it happening today. For starters there is a whole portion of the population that will see this as people free loading. This a sizable part of the population that believes all "hand-outs" are bad even if it ends up saving us money in the long run. Second, the government being the largest employer (second largest I believe if we elude the military.) I have a hard time seeing this happen due to political pressure since a sizable number of jobs would be cut... since they are no longer needed to administer these complex programs. That's not a winning election proposition. Next, take into account local impact of places where government is close to the only employer. Look how much people fight to prevent military base closing in their district; doesn't matter where on the political/fiscal ideology they stand. Finally, there's the impact to the private sector which has cropped up to administer, provide or execute some of these programs. In a perfect world states would be better able to deal some of the local welfare issues. That brings an interesting opportunity for the federal government to vastly simplify welfare programs in something along the lines of BIG (and it self in the process). And then leaving local issues to the states. Poverty can look very different in NYC compared to Tennessee. Other types of welfare issues only are a major concern in some states and not others. It's could be a very... American solution to the problem. The downside is that some states can't be counted on doing the right thing (simple example: Civil Rights). Side node: I am not a libertarian, or anything official for that matter.

aaron-lebo 12y ago
I think you are right. I like the ideas behind it: it empowers people, decentralizes power, could spur innovation, and is actually something people on the far left and far right can agree upon. I also think it is hopelessly naive. You are talking about a change that would dismantle numerous massive government programs and completely restructure social and economic life in this country. Not only, as you pointed out, is that going to be very hard to push through both to the populace and within the parties themselves, but it is way too hand wavy. Every grand political idea has promised, "just do this and it will fix everything". But there's always unintended consequences, and in a policy this far-reaching, those possible consequences are wide-ranging. It just isn't going to happen without some massive shift in political opinion in the next few decades.

VLM 12y ago

One problem: Corrupt financialization. The types that financialize everything to make the poor poorer and rich richer will end up making contracts abusing the downtrodden along the lines of "sign over rights to your B.I. for the rest of your life and we'll give your child a kidney transplant, otherwise too bad for your kid, or maybe we'll give you a subprime used car this one time or maybe enough cash to pay off that legal bill" It'll be quite a feeding frenzy for both the legal and illegal crooks for a little while. (edited to add I think you'll also on the other side need some level of bankruptcy reform... lets say the cost to me of doing business while in bankruptcy is less than $10K annually... so you'd have to be an idiot to give me a mortgage loan because I could structure things quite carefully to get it for free. Or if not normal expenses like that, the usual medical industrial complex scam of huge bills for things not covered (entirely) by insurance.)

pavel_lishin 12y ago
Does extortion not exist today?
justizin 12y ago
isn't it typical in bankruptcy where your debt is forgiven completely that you can't hold onto any asset like a home? this seems like something people could already do, and which is already protected against.

kazinator 12y ago

If one problem is that subsidized people have a disincentive to work more, that can be solved by writing everyone a check, regardless of their income level. This way, even if you have the check, any amount of work you do will supplement that check, rather than make you ineligible for part of all of the check. "From each according to his abilities, to each according to a simple flat per capita rate"

baddox 12y ago
> that can be solved by writing everyone a check, regardless of their income level. I believe that is an explicit part of the definition of "basic income." One proposal I've read is that it must be applied for or opted into somehow, so wealthier people can simply refrain from accepting if they choose.
seanflyon 12y ago
"Basic Income Guarantee" refers to Basic Income (writing everyone a check) and not Guaranteed Income (writing a check to those bellow the threshold).

jetblackio 12y ago

I like this idea, but one issue I see is that, while 95% of people could use an extra 10k, the real cost of welfare comes from those few who have major medical needs, and that 10k would do nothing for them, at least as currently outlined here. There are always going to a portion of society who will need a disproportionate amount of financial assistance, and this doesn't seem to take that in to account. It seems likely that after problems arise, we would implement some other form of welfare on top of this program, and wouldn't have really gained anything. That's my quick assumption anyway.

baddox 12y ago
> the real cost of welfare comes from those few who have major medical needs Are large per-person medical expenses a significant portion of total US welfare spending? Do you have a link to that data?
- devilshaircut 12y ago
  This isn't the metric you are looking for, but I believe the basis of this argument hinges on the proposition that financial need for medical expenses varies from demographic to demographic. I believe this is trivially demonstrated (statistically and from a common-sense standpoint) by looking at different age segments. Older people (baby boomers come to mind now) certainly do need more healthcare than younger people as a product of aging. Citation from 2008: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/05/why-does-us-health-care-cost-so-much-part-iii-an-aging-population-isnt-the-reason/ http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/05/why-does-us-hea... Does that mean they would deserve a greater financial allowance? That is for the person designing the policy to decide; the article suggests no. I offer no opinion on this. My main question is ... having read the article, I don't actually see the libertarian argument here at all. It seems to say it is simply "more libertarian" than what we currently have (with supporting arguments like "smaller government", "cheaper overhead", etc.) - but ultimately, the spirit of this proposal doesn't seem to be in line with these values at all.
  - lutorm 12y ago

oldmanjay 12y ago

i'm in favor of something like a basic income, and my reasoning in part comes down to something very much like that in the article - we are already subsidizing people, and we're doing it badly with political overtones, so let's just get rid of the crap and make the system work. I'd like it to go hand-in-hand with other sanity measures, like eliminating the gov't agency habit of foolishly spending their "leftover" money at the end of the fiscal year to avoid budget reductions the next year. It's a clear demonstration that the money isn't needed, and I'd rather see an ordinary citizen get to decide how that money is spent, because the gov't is just throwing it to well-heeled contractors who don't really need it.

harryh 12y ago

Every discussion that doesn't confront the actual math of how it would work is silly. 300M * 10k = 3 Trillion Dollars This is greater than the total revenue of the Federal government in 2013.

aturek 12y ago

I'm sorry if this is a dumb question, but what countries currently do some sort of basic income? A quick search on Google/Wikipedia turns up no actual implementations

k-mcgrady 12y ago

Excellent article. One of the things that throws me off libertarianism is the lack of social welfare. I come from the land of free health care and education so minimal social welfare is a strange concept to me and, I say this without exaggeration, seems almost evil. However a BIG is something I would definitely go for. The reduced bureaucracy, better flexibility for people to use the money as they wish, potential economical benefits etc. are all great. I still think I'd take a reduced BIG in exchange for some sort of free health care (if we got rid of that we'd just be shifting the bureaucracy from government to insurance companies) but something where consumers have more choice and we have a more competitive market.

mrfusion 12y ago

He forgot to mention that ideally minimum wage should go away under a strong BIG. Since people are getting a basic living wage from the BIG, there is no need to force employers to pay one. I think that would help make the idea compelling to libertarians. And it should address some of the concerns of a big causing less employment.