Sunday, October 9, 2011

Conservative American Enterprise Institute Supports #BasicIncome

In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State:
"America's population is wealthier than any in history. Every year, the American government redistributes more than a trillion dollars of that wealth to provide for retirement, health care, and the alleviation of poverty. We still have millions of people without comfortable retirements, without adequate health care, and living in poverty. Only a government can spend so much money so ineffectually. The solution is to give the money to the people. 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 (that was 2006, $15,000 more realistic) 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."
Current models indicate that $1,200/mo is much more realistic in U.S., today. The exact number is secondary to first educating the American public about this vital, fundamental, fiscally responsible overhaul of the costly, hopelessly fragmented, often duplicated, abused, and ineffective needs-based welfare programs.

H/T @Benjamin_Flex

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