Raghu writes >> Don't we already have a Basic Income Guarantee in the form of the EIRP? Of >> course that is attached to work requirements, so a truly universal BIG >> detached from work requirements would be a considerable advance, no?
There are many, many pieces of the so-called "safety net." Just to mention some: Earned Income Tax Credit Food stamps SSI Social Security Unemployment Ins. LIHEAP (low income heating and cooling assistance) Section 8 housing Veterans Benefits Medicaid Medicare TANF WIC (woman and children food program) Many have means tests and many have onerous application processes and no guarantees. I see a few on the list from which I've benefited. In addition are the tax breaks for various reasons -- mortgage deduction for example. Romney complained that 47% already would rather collect than to work. George Schultz had another statistic, over 50% of working age collecting something. The BIG would roll it all in, with no means test. Whether all the programs could be eliminated seems doubtful. I share your skepticism re most of the rich not coming from privileged backgrounds. Most of the extant proposals for a BIG are to be funded out of the Federal budget -- and who would pay the taxes seems now tilted to the middle class rather than the affluent. I interpret the proposals as based on the idea that "We have a good thing going, a roaring party with income for the 10%, lets keep it going by giving money to those who might express their resentment in untoward ways." The proposals that dominate are not intended to redistribute income, as I interpret them, but rather to keep the peace. As such they deflect analysis away from competing ways of redistributing income, which makes them, IMO, right wing. There is a separate category, not a right wing idea -- for example the Alaska Permanent Fund -- which doesn't come from tax receipts and is a dividend rather than a welfare payment. Peter Barnes is advocating that the receipts from the commons be paid as dividends to individuals. And he lists many "assets" that we own in common -- the atmosphere, for example, where the money gained from charging those discharging pollutants into "our" air be paid as a dividend. The spectrum is another example. Barnes mentions many things he calls "co-owned wealth", including the knowledge gained over centuries. See his recent book With Liberty and Dividends For All. Gene On May 22, 2015, at 11:32 AM, raghu <[email protected]> wrote: > On Fri, May 22, 2015 at 12:19 AM, Eugene Coyle <[email protected]> wrote: > And here's the Left, or some of it, conceding that workers won't get a share > of the GDP and settling for BIG and maybe part-time work behind the wheel of > an Uber. > And raising a few chickens in the yard. > > Don't we already have a Basic Income Guarantee in the form of the EIRP? Of > course that is attached to work requirements, so a truly universal BIG > detached from work requirements would be a considerable advance, no? > > I don't understand why the BIG is considered as a right-wing idea. Every > person having a no-strings attached share of national wealth is a good thing, > no? > > > > PS And, of course, Buffet's analysis of why some people, those talented > folks, get rich, and others, hard working and decent as they are, do not, is, > in one word, farcical. In two words, historically farcical. > > He makes this remarkable claim right in the first paragraph that "we have the > Forbes 400, most of whom did not come from privileged backgrounds". Is that > really true? Or is this a case of lying with numbers? > > I'd have guessed that the majority of the super-rich inherited substantial > wealth, and I'd be genuinely surprised if that was not the case.. > -raghu. > > > > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
