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A modest proposal.
Feb. 13th, 2015 11:10 amTrying to replace my Medi-Cal card has been taking me through a labyrinth of state and county phone systems. Mainly because there are so many different programs. It's astonishing, really. And it creates a bureaucracy that would make a Byzantine logothete sigh in contentment.
So I have a simple solution. Get rid of all of them. Instead, institute a basic national income.
Every single adult citizen living in the United States and in a household making less than twice the median household income a year (before taxes) gets an annual payment of $12,500, tax free. Assuming roughly 200 million adults qualify, that's $2.5 trillion a year, but we lose the cost of all the myriad programs, including things like Social Security. Social Security, health care, and other entitlements make up close to half the federal budget and a lot of that i overhead.
What you do with the money is your business. The money would be administered by the IRS. So if you owe taxes, it's just taken out of your annual payment. Allow the Post Office to handle banking and establish accounts for the homeless (who, with a guaranteed income, should be able to find some sort of housing pretty quickly.)
College loans? Who needs them? Parents can just bank their annual payments for a few years and pay for a couple of years of schooling. Meantime, the kid attending college gets their money as well.
One of the big advantages I see is a change in how we see work. America is a still stuck in the whole "work until you die" model. This plan allows people to work less if they like, and they can even plan for sabbaticals or going back to school without worrying about income. Obviously, if you want more, you work, but if your goal is to work part time while establishing your career as an artist, you can do that.
It might even bring back communal living. Six people coming together to live and work together would start out with $75,000 a year to work with.
Now think of the local tax benefits. I would expect that a lot of that money is going to be used the way people use their tax refunds - they're going to buy things. Think of the sales tax boost from that!
The Guaranteed Personal Income. Make it happen.
Comments welcome.
So I have a simple solution. Get rid of all of them. Instead, institute a basic national income.
Every single adult citizen living in the United States and in a household making less than twice the median household income a year (before taxes) gets an annual payment of $12,500, tax free. Assuming roughly 200 million adults qualify, that's $2.5 trillion a year, but we lose the cost of all the myriad programs, including things like Social Security. Social Security, health care, and other entitlements make up close to half the federal budget and a lot of that i overhead.
What you do with the money is your business. The money would be administered by the IRS. So if you owe taxes, it's just taken out of your annual payment. Allow the Post Office to handle banking and establish accounts for the homeless (who, with a guaranteed income, should be able to find some sort of housing pretty quickly.)
College loans? Who needs them? Parents can just bank their annual payments for a few years and pay for a couple of years of schooling. Meantime, the kid attending college gets their money as well.
One of the big advantages I see is a change in how we see work. America is a still stuck in the whole "work until you die" model. This plan allows people to work less if they like, and they can even plan for sabbaticals or going back to school without worrying about income. Obviously, if you want more, you work, but if your goal is to work part time while establishing your career as an artist, you can do that.
It might even bring back communal living. Six people coming together to live and work together would start out with $75,000 a year to work with.
Now think of the local tax benefits. I would expect that a lot of that money is going to be used the way people use their tax refunds - they're going to buy things. Think of the sales tax boost from that!
The Guaranteed Personal Income. Make it happen.
Comments welcome.
