After NASCAR I get sucked into a C-SPAN rebroadcast of a program from last April, where American Enterprise Institute fellow Charles Murray is discussing his latest book titled In Our Hands. This self-proclaimed libertarian writer from a conservative think tank “suggests eliminating all welfare transfer programs at the federal, state, and local levels and substituting an annual $10,000 cash grant to everyone age twenty-one or older.”
A Plan to Replace the Welfare State: The place to start is a blindingly obvious economic reality that no one seems to notice: This country is awash in money. America is so wealthy that enabling everyone to have a decent standard of living is easy. We cannot do it by fiddling with the entitlement and welfare systems--they constitute a Gordian Knot that cannot be untied. But we can cut the knot. We can scrap the structure of the welfare state.Is income redistribution acceptable as a way to rid ourselves of the expensive, damaging failure of the welfare state? Murray has a long research career understanding the reasons why government paternalism destroys the value systems required to create prosperity with justice. His writings were influential in achieving welfare reform in the 1990’s and now he is selling a plan to eliminate Social Security, Medicare and the entire entitlement travesty in one fell swoop. Career liberal UW Madison Professor of Philosophy Harry Brighouse finds the proposal somewhat familiar.
Crooked Timber: The central proposal is for a basic income grant of $10,000 per year for every citizen aged 21 and above. There are two catches. The first is that everyone must spend $3000 of that grant on a basic health care package … The second is that all other government welfare programs … would be abolished to pay for the grant. … This is a case of the left having the ideas, and the right adopting and selling them.Just as the left reluctantly had to acknowledge ideas from the right on welfare reform last decade, the right needs to recognize that poverty and healthcare are problems continuing to drive votes towards socialist elements in the Democratic Party. Expunging Marxist influenced government programs will require a meaningful political solution to both issues. Still, I question whether direct cash payment is a good solution and Gioblog points out the primary concern.
Gioblog: Creating a single number that applies to every American is an invitation to overwhelming political pressure. Now, in the case of a flat tax, where the same federal income tax rate applies to everyone, the effect is ingenious in creating a massive political constituency to keep the number (the rate) DOWN, which is good. But in the case of Murray's plan, in which he creates in effect a guaranteed minimum income for every American, the number would create a massive political constituency to continually RAISE the number, which would be a disaster.The goal should be to maximize liberty by minimizing dependence upon government and I am more inclined to support measures which protect a persons first $10,000 of income from any government seizure.
