I agree that's well taken. But insofar as a great part
of our consumption is individually financed, and ever
more will be so, redistributing wealth in the form of cash
will be an enduring and compelling option in the pursuit
of equality.
mbs
>
> The wealth tax is a real difference. Enacting th
Max:
The wealth tax is a real difference. Enacting the Ackerman/Alstott
scheme might better than anything else now on the horizon. But stake or
no stake, I am still wary of the notion of each individual poor person
as atomized consumer/investor. It may be an accurate reflection of our
social ethi
response to Joel B:
The Ackerman/Alstott scheme is different from IDA's in some
key respects. Typically with IDA's the account holder
contributes in some measure, so it would be hard to have
an IDA at age 21 based on contributions from earnings
prior to that age. Ackerman/Alstott propose a weal
In addition to Ackerman, Michael Sherraden at Washington University in
St.Louis has proposed Individual Development Accounts (IDAs), which Clinton
actually included in his 2000 State of the Union address. Forty-four states
already have small experimental versions of these IDAs, including 27 states
This is a good article, but I want to quibble with the
characterization
of the Ackerman proposal, of which I am a fan. First of all, there
are
two authors of the book and proposal, Ackerman and Anne Alstott,
also a Yale law prof. Ackerman describes himself as a 'kantian
liberal.' I'll leave