« Enough! | Main | come here a minute »
February 10, 2005
Free money for Everyone
Here’s an idea: Give everyone a few hundred bucks a month and gut all other forms of welfare. By everyone, they mean everyone from the guy begging on the street to Your Favorite Example of a Rich Man.
The term “negative income tax” was coined by Milton Friedman, who called for it in Capitalism and Freedom as the best and most efficient way to help the poor; he has regularly reaffirmed his support. Robert Theobald, in Free Men and Free Markets, maintained that individuals, businesses, and society as a whole would function more freely and evolve more readily if we “break the strangle hold of the job-income link.”
The Approximately US$9,000 per year envisioned by the Green Party wouldn’t really be enough to encourage any more of the mythical “Malibu Surfers”, yet it certainly would provide 8 months of my rent, or a nice Disney vacation for my Father and Step-Mother...
It is this later part that worries me a bit-- wouldn’t giving money away unattached to any personal labor cause enormous inflationary pressure? Perhaps I am missing something...
Posted by Andrew at February 10, 2005 09:33 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.punningpundit.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/652
Comments
Presumably Friedman would make up the difference in eliminating Social Security from the budget and increasing revenue streams from other taxes: Capital Gains, Inheritance, Corporate Taxation. There's only inflationary pressure if the government is drawing it from a deficit.
Since it can be argued that inflation of that kind is really a hidden form of property and capital taxation, maybe the distinction is moot.
Tariffs are another possibility, but I really doubt Friedman would be wanting to do that.
Posted by: John Foelster at February 10, 2005 08:28 PM