Monday, June 12, 2006

Charles Murray's Ponies for Everyone Plan

From Crooked Timber I learn that Charles Murray, putative libertarian, proposes a guaranteed basic income in lieu of the current entitlement structure: http://crookedtimber.org/2006/06/01/charles-murrays-in-our-hands-left-or-right/

In a nutshell, every citizen 21 and older would get $10,000 a year, of which $3,000 would be spent on a medical coverage program. All other programs, from welfare to social security, would be abolished. It does not appear that this is needs based, so even Donald Trump would get a check. This looks to me like it would cost a couple of trillion bucks a year at the outset and increase with the population. As the folks at CT point out, it is inevitable that politicians would run on increasing the amount of the guarantee.

I reckon we could do an end run on the politicians and set the basic income guarantee at $100,000 per year from the start.

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