a plan to replace the welfare state

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The place to start is a blindingly obvious economic reality that no one seems to notice: This country is awash in money. America is so wealthy that enabling everyone to have a decent standard of living is easy. We cannot do it by fiddling with the entitlement and welfare systems--they constitute a Gordian Knot that cannot be untied. But we can cut the knot. We can scrap the structure of the welfare state.

Instead of sending taxes to Washington, straining them through bureaucracies and converting what remains into a muddle of services, subsidies, in-kind support and cash hedged with restrictions and exceptions, just collect the taxes, divide them up, and send the money back in cash grants to all American adults. Make the grant large enough so that the poor won't be poor, everyone will have enough for a comfortable retirement, and everyone will be able to afford health care. We're rich enough to do it.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008142

― +++, Thursday, 30 March 2006 20:22 (twenty years ago)

Hahaha wait.

― Dan (This Is A Joke, Right?) Perry (Dan Perry), Thursday, 30 March 2006 20:27 (twenty years ago)

Them's powerful strong disincentives to create any new wealth you're talking there, +++.

― Aimless (Aimless), Thursday, 30 March 2006 20:28 (twenty years ago)

there was already a thread about this and of course its a monumentally stupid idea.

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 30 March 2006 20:29 (twenty years ago)

sorry i didnt see the other thread

its an admirably wrong plan

― +++, Thursday, 30 March 2006 20:31 (twenty years ago)

Haven't link-clicked, but the text as given is either a joke or a person with a bizarre sense of logic, like right down to spatial logistics. The main actual idea that I can wrestle out of there is something like "give cash, not services."

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 30 March 2006 20:31 (twenty years ago)

isnt this basically just bush's tax cuts x 30

― +++, Thursday, 30 March 2006 20:33 (twenty years ago)

this isn't a joke, its standard fare for the WSJ Editorial Page, which is awash in crackpottery.

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 30 March 2006 20:38 (twenty years ago)

It's a kind of small-child dream-logic, really, and it winds up obscuring the one legimitate point they could be making -- that providing services (rather than cash) can diminish the per-dollar effect you get for your money. Of course, the flipside is that people's use of cash is even more likely to do the same thing, which is precisely why people on the right are usually the ones keen on doling out rigidly defined services instead of cash.

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 30 March 2006 20:43 (twenty years ago)

but... $10,000 is a lot of money

― ++++, Thursday, 30 March 2006 20:44 (twenty years ago)

:( i hoped there would be arguing before the nabisco posts

― ++++, Thursday, 30 March 2006 20:45 (twenty years ago)

Ha, skimming the article, he seems to momentarily drift into a non-sequitur transcendentalist support of this idea.

Conservatives with plans like this remind me of anarchists, and not just for the obvious reasons. They both seem to think that simplicity is the answer to all things, and that all things can be done simply -- as if they haven't noticed that things get done, on whatever scale, largely through organizational action. I mean, you can see the dream-logic in the pure logistics of that one paragraph quoted. Instead of sending taxes to Washington, straining them through bureaucracies ... just collect the taxes, divide them up, and send the money back -- umm, wait, where are we collecting the money? In Washington? Who's dividing the taxes up -- the Department of Non-Bureaucratic Dividing-Up? It's like you can see this weird childlike dreaming just in the incidentals of how he actually imagines the process happening.

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 30 March 2006 20:55 (twenty years ago)

haha i was gonna say that but in a stupider way - it really must be alot of fun!

― ++++, Thursday, 30 March 2006 20:57 (twenty years ago)

we could call it the Department of Sharing.

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 30 March 2006 20:59 (twenty years ago)

i think it should be distributed at the end of rainbows

― ++++, Thursday, 30 March 2006 21:04 (twenty years ago)

Ha, actually, the more I think about this, I think it is a trick, or a joke -- and "innovative" bold-thinking way of saying the same things conservatives have said all along, which is that power over things should descend to either the private sector or the local/community level. Because even in a perfect-world application of these ideas, that's precisely what happens. So you give people cash for their health care -- sounds empowering and bureaucracy-nixing. But of course what do they do with it? They buy into bureaucratic communal arrangements like private health insurance -- all you've accomplished is increasing privatization! You give people cash and, being wonderful people, they decide that what their community needs is a youth center: the only way to accomplish this is to organize into the exact kinds of communal organizations this idea thinks it's getting rid of -- reverting past state's rights toward community control. The only thing conservatives like this seem to have a problem with is that the scale of that communal organization -- federal government -- is too large for them to feel like they have any connection to it. (Just like lots of anarchists.)

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 30 March 2006 21:07 (twenty years ago)

I often dream up weird economic what-ifs similar to this. Like why not just print a 10,000 dollar bill and hand it out, one per person. Don't even have to collect taxes.

― laurence kansas (lawrence kansas), Thursday, 30 March 2006 21:16 (twenty years ago)

There's no way we're getting to Mars on this train

― TOMBOT (TOMBOT), Thursday, 30 March 2006 21:18 (twenty years ago)

Did someone in the other thread point out that the WSJ editorial was by Charles "Bell Curve" Murray?

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Thursday, 30 March 2006 21:18 (twenty years ago)

Because nobody would work without constant worry to drive them.

― Not, Thursday, 30 March 2006 21:22 (twenty years ago)

Nabisco SO OTM

― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Thursday, 30 March 2006 21:26 (twenty years ago)

The final word on this is Springfield vs Bear Tax.

― Robocock (noodle vague), Thursday, 30 March 2006 21:28 (twenty years ago)

the privately financed military libraries and education system and highways and airports and future-equivalents-of-the-internet are going to ~~rule~~ suck, but who needs to fly or read or be defended or drive or learn when we've got the good ol' american dream of writing shitty, fascist opinion columns for a page not even newt gingrich would wipe his ass with

― Tracey Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 30 March 2006 21:29 (twenty years ago)

haha "military libraries"

― Tracey Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 30 March 2006 21:32 (twenty years ago)

federal spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (will) rise from its current 9% of gross domestic product to the 28% of GDP that it will consume in 2050 if past growth rates continue.

Is this assumption correct?

― M. White (Miguelito), Thursday, 30 March 2006 21:32 (twenty years ago)

You know, I was even trying to be really charitable and assume that he was referring strictly to the social-services portion of the budget, and would still want stuff like transportation and basic public safety and all that on a federal structure.

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 30 March 2006 21:36 (twenty years ago)

"The final word on this is Springfield vs Bear Tax."

I pay the Homer tax, bears should have to pay the bear tax!

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 30 March 2006 21:37 (twenty years ago)

B-b-but they already pay the wood-shitting tax!

― Robocock (noodle vague), Thursday, 30 March 2006 21:39 (twenty years ago)

This sounds like the school vouchers concept expanded to cover all government-provided social services- except that instead of giving you vouchers they just give you cash. The folly of it is obvious if you just think about why they have to give you vouchers and not cash in the school voucher program - because it's in society's interest to see that the money is spent on education. Of course that's the kind of government paternalism that libertarian-minded conservatives hate, and hence you get proposals like this one.

― o. nate (onate), Thursday, 30 March 2006 21:49 (twenty years ago)

Cos the simple minded peasants would just spend it on ciggies and gin?

― Robocock (noodle vague), Thursday, 30 March 2006 21:53 (twenty years ago)

nabs yeah i know - but where does education fall there? from current fed behavior it would seem to be very much one of their "optional" govt services

whenever i read an outlandishly right-wing econ policy arg like this i wait for the moment when the author admits his or her logic is founded on the most optimistic and charitable spinning of private-sector growth imaginable (and in the context of the WSJ editorial section that's "a fair piece" as they say in the south) .. and sure enough, we get it .. "if past growth rates continue" he says. well, they won't. and they already haven't. and when they don't what the fuck are people going to do. what he's suggesting is tantamount to murder. he wants to turn the entire US into a katrina wasteland. fuck this guy and everybody else who thinks this way.

― Tracey Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 30 March 2006 21:57 (twenty years ago)

"federal spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (will) rise from its current 9% of gross domestic product to the 28% of GDP that it will consume in 2050 if past growth rates continue."

'cept as Krugman's pointed out repeatedly, there is no such program as "socialsecuritymedicareandmedicaid." The latter 2 programs will be responsible for the bulk of that increase, but cons like to toss the first in along with them as evidence that we need to dismantle--er, reform--it.

― Martin Van Buren (Martin Van Buren), Thursday, 30 March 2006 21:59 (twenty years ago)

Cos the simple minded peasants would just spend it on ciggies and gin?

Exactly. And then once they wake from their gin-soaked stupors and realize the error of their ways, who will be around to help them and provide their younguns with the knowledge that they'll need to compete in tomorrow's information economy? Why, the churches, that's who. So young Jimmy will be sure to get a healthy dose of good Christian principles with his readin', ritin' and 'rithmetic.

― o. nate (onate), Thursday, 30 March 2006 22:03 (twenty years ago)

there is a 37 million under class in America according to a recent study, meanwhile the rich US elite continue to get richer and billions have been spent on the iraq war.

― DJ Martian (djmartian), Thursday, 30 March 2006 22:07 (twenty years ago)

When I'm wallowing in cynicism I like to think it's economic opportunities that drag the working class out of the shit, not educational ones.

― Robocock (noodle vague), Thursday, 30 March 2006 22:07 (twenty years ago)

Another major loophole in this proposal is what to do with the people who are entering retirement today. $10K per year ain't much to live on these days. People who are just starting on their careers will have plenty of time to invest their gov't payouts so as to be ready at retirement, but not the ones who are already at retirement age. So something would have to be adjusted to take care of them.

― o. nate (onate), Thursday, 30 March 2006 22:12 (twenty years ago)

Cos the simple minded peasants would just spend it on ciggies and gin?

I think their response to this idea would be (a) "how dare you paternalistic elitists presume that you're the only ones who know how people should spend their money" plus (b) "oh and by the way if they do we'll have this great opportunity to wash our hands of it and be all like 'we gave you the cash, you fucked it up, no excuses, personal responsibility, quit yr bitching, etc.'"

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 30 March 2006 22:14 (twenty years ago)

A person who asks for help because he has frittered away his monthly check will find people and organizations who will help (America has a history of producing such people and organizations in abundance

Ha ha!

― M. White (Miguelito), Thursday, 30 March 2006 22:20 (twenty years ago)

Akshully I do think ciggies and gin is a viable lifestyle choice, but I'm not disagreeing with you guys. The best I can drunkenly manage at the moment is that western welfare systems seem to me to be (mostly) badly disguised ways of keeping an unwanted but necessary section of the population quiet enough to stop them taking radical action to improve their lives.

― Robocock (noodle vague), Thursday, 30 March 2006 22:22 (twenty years ago)

ok, so...$10,000 each for 300 million people is $3 trillion a year. the entire federal budget (including almost $600 billion for the dept. of defense) was something like $2.5 trillion last year. so even if you assume that he's actually proposing scrapping the d.o.d., the fbi, and every other single federal agency of any kind, he's still talking about an enormous tax hike. right? what a weird column.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Thursday, 30 March 2006 22:33 (twenty years ago)

You know you'd just have to fork over that $10,000 and more to pay the property taxes for utilities, road maintenance, and private-army security in the Mad Max-style fortress community you'd be begging to be accepted into as a resident.

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 30 March 2006 22:46 (twenty years ago)

that's the magic of the free market my friend

― Tracey Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 30 March 2006 22:59 (twenty years ago)

i just wish anti-american, anti-government extremists like this would get called out a little more for what they are and not just on dailykos. this guy literally wants to destroy the government. still waiting for the next breed of right-wing superpatriots who pay MORE taxes than they owe every year because they love this country just so damned much.

― Tracey Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 30 March 2006 23:01 (twenty years ago)

Plus, you're paying 3K off the top of that ten thousand for health insurance under this plan. Still, a small price to pay for virtue, I suppose.

By the way, it's not like our private health care system is so fantastically efficient. What percentage of GDP will *that* swallow up in 50 years?

― Martin Van Buren (Martin Van Buren), Thursday, 30 March 2006 23:05 (twenty years ago)

I'm wondering if this article is maybe supposed to be a ridiculous and extreme version of an idea that a few months will be publically entertained by the GOP in a very circumscribed form, maybe only affecting certain social services, say. "See, we know it's a radical idea, but it's not as crazy as THAT idea. Woo, what were are these strawman crazies (that we happen to fund) thinking?"

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Thursday, 30 March 2006 23:16 (twenty years ago)

Wikipedia: As a late-teenage youth, Murray and several friends staged a cross-burning ceremony outside a police station in his home town. Murray claimed he was unaware at the time of the Ku Klux Klan associations of this activity.

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Thursday, 30 March 2006 23:19 (twenty years ago)

As a late-teenage youth, Murray and several friends staged a lynching outside a police station in his home town. Murray claimed he was unaware at the time of the Ku Klux Klan associations of this activity.

― Robocock (noodle vague), Thursday, 30 March 2006 23:27 (twenty years ago)

The best I can drunkenly manage at the moment is that western welfare systems seem to me to be (mostly) badly disguised ways of keeping an unwanted but necessary section of the population quiet enough to stop them taking radical action to improve their lives.

Alcohol itself is pretty effective as an "opiate of the masses". There's an amusing story from To the Finland Station:

Later - on June, 1855 - a Sunday Trading Bill was passed which, in the interests of keeping the lower classes sober, deprived them of their Sunday beer; and the common people of London congregated every Sunday in Hyde Park to the number of from a quarter to half a million and insubordinately howled "Go to church!" at the holiday-making toffs. Marx was ready to believe that it was "the beginning of the English revolution" and took himself so active a part in the demonstration that on one occasion he was nearly arrested and only escaped by entangling the policeman in one of his irresistible disputations. But the government gave the people back their beer, and nothing came of the agitation.

― o. nate (onate), Thursday, 30 March 2006 23:29 (twenty years ago)

he's a Quaker?! wtf - most Quakers I've met are raging liberals.

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 30 March 2006 23:30 (twenty years ago)

(okay maybe "raging" is the wrong term there, but still...)

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 30 March 2006 23:30 (twenty years ago)

nate I've read a bunch of mid-19th century Punch articles and it's unbelievable how hysterical those people got about whether the lower classes should be allowed to buy a cup of tea on a Sunday.

― Robocock (noodle vague), Thursday, 30 March 2006 23:35 (twenty years ago)

meanwhile, i got downsized today, so bring on the welfare

― kingfish ubermensch dishwasher sundae (kingfish 2.0), Friday, 31 March 2006 00:26 (twenty years ago)

xpost
I was surprised by that as well (Murray's Quakery that is)- the Quakers themselves have discussed it though...
http://www.quaker.org/tqe/2003/TQE082-EN-BellCurve1.html
From a pretty interesting journal - The Quaker Economist.

― Ned T.RIfle II (Ned T.Rifle II), Friday, 31 March 2006 08:38 (twenty years ago)

he's a Quaker?! wtf - most Quakers I've met are raging liberals.

HI DERE

http://countrystudies.us/united-states/Richard-Nixon.jpg

― phil d. (Phil D.), Friday, 31 March 2006 12:12 (twenty years ago)

oh shit, sorry kingfish. :(

― teeny (teeny), Friday, 31 March 2006 14:30 (twenty years ago)

america has a welfare state?

― ken c (ken c), Friday, 31 March 2006 14:32 (twenty years ago)

is that like iowa or something

― ken c (ken c), Friday, 31 March 2006 14:32 (twenty years ago)

see this is fun

― ++++, Friday, 31 March 2006 14:35 (twenty years ago)

xpost before ken showed up

― ++++, Friday, 31 March 2006 14:35 (twenty years ago)

this thread has fun?

― ken c (ken c), Friday, 31 March 2006 14:37 (twenty years ago)

see i know there was something special & wonderful about this beyond standard wsj opinion fare but i never even bothered to think about the $3 trillion figure - i guess i assumed america spends more than $10k per american per year already?? its such an incredible plan!!

― ++++, Friday, 31 March 2006 14:42 (twenty years ago)

Yeah, that's the real scandal here - that in a country that collects as much taxes and accumulates as much debt as the US that we spend less than an average of $10K per person on all social services, including entitlements. Why do we need an armed forces that's larger than the rest of the world's combined again?

― o. nate (onate), Friday, 31 March 2006 15:40 (twenty years ago)

dood kingfish that suxx!

I thought Nixon was like a 7th Day Adventist or a mennonite or something

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 31 March 2006 15:46 (twenty years ago)

he was def a quaker - 'remember me as a peacemaker'!!!

― ++++, Friday, 31 March 2006 16:06 (twenty years ago)

his legacy is now carried by john bolton

― ++++, Friday, 31 March 2006 16:07 (twenty years ago)

I'm the Peacemaker, bitch!

― John Bolton (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 31 March 2006 16:08 (twenty years ago)

youre not funny

― ++++, Friday, 31 March 2006 16:17 (twenty years ago)

thank you thank you, I'll be here for the rest of your life

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 31 March 2006 16:17 (twenty years ago)

that in a country that collects as much taxes and accumulates as much debt as the US that we spend less than an average of $10K per person on all social services, including entitlements.

well keep in mind that we're only talking about federal money here. lots of social services are paid for and provided at state and local levels. (most education funding, e.g., is state and local)

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Friday, 31 March 2006 16:26 (twenty years ago)

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a plan to replace the welfare state - c/d