Reddit reviews In Our Hands : A Plan To Replace The Welfare State

First, I don't have anything to say about the UK, but someone already ran numbers for replacing the US welfare system (the entire system mind you; welfare, TANF, disability, SS, medicare, medicaid) with an unconditional basic income system that provides 10k per year per person for everyone over 21, starting in 2010 or so, and it was roughly even. The book is In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0844742236 . Some countries, such as Australia and Brazil already have some degree of basic income systems in place, so just because such a thing might not be viable today, or for everyone yet, doesn't mean the concept has no merit.

Second, an economy runs on the flow of money. I don't find it terribly complex to understand the following argument: a) increasing automation will lead to higher capital/investment costs and lower ongoing costs for businesses b) businesses will need less employees and spend less money over time to produce their products c) wealth will collect in the accounts of the people that own the capital and businesses because they have minimal costs to pay; no employees, production costs are paid upfront, etc d) economy grinds to a halt as the owners continually make more money than they spend or lose through taxes until no one else has any money.

We're already seeing this happen to some degree; corporations are sitting on stacks of cash because they have no reason to invest it because there's no one left who can/will consume more of their products. Inflation seems by far to be a minor concern compared with this kind of problem, where we have the effective capability to provide for the needs of everyone, but we don't because of the mechanisms of our economic system isn't capable of dealing with our technological progress. In such a world money is much less important as a means of storing value than it is as a means of efficient resource distribution/allocation.

And finally, I'm missing the issue with corporate taxes. Corporate taxes are on profits; I don't see how this affects consumers, and I don't see how its a bad thing or affects investment. Corporate taxes should encourage investment by my measure, because it means you're better off spending a chunk of cash on R&D or whatever instead of putting 70% of that in your bank account and sending the other 30% to the government. Unless I'm missing something, in which case by all means, enlighten me.

Why don't you just read his book on the topic?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Our-Hands-Replace-Welfare-State/dp/0844742236

This one by Allan Sheahen is considered to be one of the best books on the topic, and Allan Sheahen is one of the oldest supporters of UBI in America.

This one is also great, from a more libertarian perspective. Charles Murray is a well-respected libertarian thinker.

If you're looking for something academic, these textbooks are pretty awesome- one and two.

Interestingly, I'm not totally opposed to it, as long as it is implemented as a replacement for current welfare systems (or at minimum a massive reduction). I actually really like Charles Murray's version in his book In Our Hands, and would actively support it.

The problem is most conservatives oppose it "morally" (people don't deserve my money) for the same reasons they oppose welfare, and most liberals oppose it because they want it in addition to our current welfare system, which is economic suicide and doesn't actually fix any of the problems with welfare as is. For many liberals, people deserve a basic income, and welfare, and basically whatever they want, because rich people have "too much" money, so they're unlikely to support a replacement of welfare with UBI, which is (in my opinion) the only viable solution.

Murray sells it really well, but sadly I don't see how either political view would buy it. Which is too bad.

Side note: I also believe we should drop half of our mandatory humanities programs in school and replace them with finance education. Giving people money when they don't know how to use it is pointless, and it's insane we give more attention to Oliver Twist than budgeting, paying bills, avoiding debt, and investing.

Giving the poor money is necessary to eliminate poverty in the short term, but if you want to keep them out, we need to be teaching people personal finance. It's more universally applicable than sex ed (not everyone will have sex, but everyone will deal with money), yet we spend even less time on it.

A UBI combined with basic finance education minus our horrid welfare state would be, in my opinion, a huge economic bonus to the United States and those in poverty. It only helps the poor, not special interest groups and voting blocks, however, so it'll probably never go anywhere.

There are lots of other great documents and videos of Murray explaining his idea that he details in his book In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State

Charles Murray (conservative) wrote a book about universal minimum income, at 10K/adult https://www.amazon.com/Our-Hands-Replace-Welfare-State/dp/0844742236

unsure if that would work, but he put the idea out there

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0844742236/ref=nosim/nationalreviewon

Great minds think alike... some of the details are different but the general idea has been out there for a while. Also google "basic income guarantee."

Of course it's redistribution of wealth, and that's not against libertarian principles. Charles Murray wrote a whole book about it. The Cato Institute has thoroughly discussed the idea in mostly glowing terms. It's far from universally supported among libertarians, but it has solid traction.

UBI, in the way Murray wants, it is not an expansion of the social safety net. He wants it to replace all other social services.


>This is the Plan, a radical new approach to social policy that defies any partisan label. Murray suggests eliminating all welfare transfer programs at the federal, state, and local levels and substituting an annual $10,000 cash grant to everyone age twenty-one or older. In Our Hands describes the financial feasibility of the Plan and its effects on retirement, health care, poverty, marriage and family, work, neighborhoods and civil society.


The libertarian version of UBI is a massive reduction in the benefits the average person uses

You are now getting closer to the real argument, I applaud you.

Getting rid of Medicare seems like a bad idea. In fact, society as a whole would likely be better off if everyone had healthcare (cost per person goes down, less health-induced poverty related crimes, etc) - but getting to that point is hard in a nice libertarian fashion. Charles Murray's idea to have a UBI coupled with a requirement to spend some on healthcare might be better than our status quo, but probably has some externalities that make it undesirable.

As for the other issues, I think many UBI advocates would handle the Social Security problem as an issue that will eventually phase out. You take anyone getting SS >1000/month and you give them their 1000/month in UBI plus the difference in SS. 1000 from UBI, 400 from SS. All people retiring after some cutoff don't get any SS top-up. Eventually phases out as an issue. Yes, if UBI stays at 1000/month and costs increase, this can be bad for the elderly. But it is also bad for the elderly to have an entire youth generation living in poverty, unable to get training. How do people retire? By purchasing the labor of the young with assets they acquired while young. One can't retire by hoarding assets unless there are people willing to do work to get those assets. Unless fully robotic retirement facilities pop up.

As for the gross price tag still being large, there are many arguments to be made on how to handle that issue, but I won't make them here as they typically require increased taxes of some kind and such discussions don't go far in this subreddit.

I would bring up the issue with treating money as a scarce resource. I like to look at money as valuable tool that helps facilitate market operations and allows a measuring of the value of a thing to a person. It measures a slice of goods owned to the holder. What does giving every adult 12k/year really mean? It means we think everyone deserves at least a small piece of the total goods produced; a base minimum before any productivity. No longer does anyone deserve 0%, even if they produce nothing. The real question is whether we want to move that direction as a society - and not whether X trillions of dollars is too costly.

Can society as a whole produce enough food, housing, and healthcare for all? Definitely. Many non-essential goods while doing it? Sure. We have a distribution problem, not a production problem.

https://www.amazon.com/Our-Hands-Replace-Welfare-State/dp/0844742236

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-guaranteed-income-for-every-american-1464969586

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016/06/04/of-course-we-can-afford-a-universal-basic-income-do-we-want-one-though/#5f62aa4ae00a