Wednesday, November 28, 2012

A Truly Outrageous Graph

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-11-27/when-work-punished-tragedy-americas-welfare-state

Be glad most people can't do math, or we'd be even more screwed than we already are.  The marginal impact of earning an additional dollar 'on the books' in many of these ranges is negative---VERY negative.

Increasingly I'm an aggressive proponent of junking out entire state, local, and federal welfare and social services sections and just cutting everyone---EVERYONE, no means testing---who is a citizen over 18 years of age and not in prison, a citizen's dividend on the order of $10k per year.  You the people demand a fair amount of socialism, and while I think it's a bad idea overall, I think the citizen's dividend solution sucks the least.  It at least would be highly transparent and, if directly linked to something nice and transparent (like replacing the income tax with a consumption tax or perhaps a national property tax, or, my preference, a substantial revenue tariff) would be very capable of defending itself as a political construct (as with the Alaskan citizen's dividend).

4 comments:

Jacob Ian Stalk said...

A citizen's dividend of $10k? It will be a cold day in Hades when such a truly egalitarian idea feels the breeze anywhere that matters.

Jehu said...

Jacob,
The idea actually has a fair bit of support at both extreme ends of the spectrum. Murray has proposed something fairly similar, as have tons of hardcore Leftists. Alaska actually has a citizen's dividend. Even starting incrementally at a small level, like say $500 per citizen per year, has a good chance to crowd everything else out and get to the desired end state. I really wouldn't say its so much of an egalitarian idea but more of a pragmatic one. Once you have a substantial citizen's dividend in place---substantive enough that the median person's response to someone saying they need another transfer payment from the general society's pool is 'piss off', you can dump a LOT of things that impede employment.

Jacob Ian Stalk said...

This was tried in Australia not too long ago by the ruling Labour Party. They gave $5000 to a limited number of unemployed to get them out of whatever predicament they were in that was restricting them from getting gainful employment. A review of the program a year later revealed that 70% of the recipients were still unemployed after nine months and that they'd spent the money on booze, cigarettes, pot and gambling as much as on food, clothing and children's toys.

Giving the lazy and entitled a lump sum is a guarantee that half of it will be spent on vice, which serves only the peddlers and government through taxes. No different to a scratchie lottery ticket, really.

Jehu said...

Jacob,
The point of citizen's dividends is that they go to everyone (who is a citizen of requisite age), not just to the lazy.