The Other Milton Friedman: A Conservative With a Social Welfare Program - New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/23/business/23scene.html excerpt.. Milton Friedman who died last week at 94, was the patron saint of small-government conservatism. Conservatives who invoke his name in defense of Social Security privatization and other cutbacks in the social safety net might thus be surprised to learn that he was also the architect of the most successful social welfare program of all time. Market forces can accomplish wonderful things, he realized, but they cannot ensure a distribution of income that enables all citizens to meet basic economic needs. His proposal, which he called the negative income tax, was to replace the multiplicity of existing welfare programs with a single cash transfer - say, $6,000 - to every citizen. A family of four with no market income would thus receive an annual payment from the I.R.S. of $24,000. For each dollar the family then earned, this payment would be reduced by some fraction - perhaps 50 percent. A family of four earning $12,000 a year, for example, would receive a net supplement of $18,000 (the initial $24,000 less the $6,000 tax on its earnings). Mr. Friedman's proposal was undoubtedly motivated in part by his concern for the welfare of the least fortunate. But he was above all a pragmatist, and he emphasized the superiority of the negative income tax over conventional welfare programs on purely practical grounds. If the main problem of the poor is that they have too little money, he reasoned, the simplest and cheapest solution is to give them some more. He saw no advantage in hiring armies of bureaucrats to dispense food stamps, energy stamps, day care stamps and rent subsidies. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ed Weick Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2012 9:20 AM To: [email protected] Cc: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] [Ottawadissenters] RE: Meeting on social rights issues Thank you for responding, Eleanor. I didn't know that the GAI had been tried in Manitoba and Segal didn't mention it. What he did say, however, is that it costs some $240,000 to keep a person in prison for a year. Providing a family with income of just above the low income cut-off would be considerably less than that. Indeed, you might be able to provide a GAI to five or six families for the price of one prisoner. However, I do appreciate that our present government is into building prisons and incarceration, not the social well-being of poor families. Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: Eleanor Glor <mailto:[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, May 07, 2012 11:16 PM Subject: RE: [Ottawadissenters] RE: [Futurework] Meeting on social rights issues Thanks for sharing this, Ed. Here's my thoughts on your questions: 1. If it made that much sense and could readily be implemented, why hasn't it been done? It was done. A demonstration project was run in Manitoba for about ten years during the 1970s. It was not implemented nationally for two reasons. (1) It was very costly. (2) During the 1970s the Canadian and western economies took a dive because of two oil crises, involving big increases in the price of oil. Since then there have been cuts in taxes to the wealthy and little increase in salaries for the middle class, translating into stagnant government revenues and purchasing power. I can't think of any new social programs that have been funded since then. 2. Why isn't Segal pushing very hard instead of just making speeches? I think he is pushing hard but that the current Conservative government isn't listening to him. I have trouble imagining a scenario in which the Conservatives would fund a GIA. If any new money was made available, it would go to the deserving poor e.g. the mentally ill (the news today does not hold much promise, though). Eleanor Snip,snip
_______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
