It seems like reducing socialism to me. Instead of the gov't hand-picking (centrally planning) benefactors of tax dollars, e.g. defense contractors or oil/ag subsidies, it's being returned to the people (and all the people - not just some according to their need or whatever).
True, but if I pay $60,000 in federal taxes each year, and only receive $25,000 in "mincome", then it's still "socialism" (as Americans seem to define it).
It seems that any tax plan that is remotely progressive is immediately labeled as "socialist" by the right.
It's probably an ever bigger problem than that. Regardless of liberal or conservative, if you want to raise taxes essentially across the board (which you'd have to do--even taking all of the wealth of "the 1%" would fund this project for maybe a year) you're going to have a really tough time convincing people that their taxes are going to be raised 500% or whatever it would end up being.
Just back-of-the envelope numbers, if 300 million Americans received $30k/yr, that's $9 trillion dollars per year that has to come from someplace. My guess would be that the majority of people would end up handing that $30k right back in the form of taxes. And at that point, it becomes an exercise in the government giving people money, then having to get it back via taxes, so then what is the point? Is it easier to give 10 people $10 or to give 100 people $10, then take $900 of it back?
Is it easier to give 10 people $10 or to give 100 people $10, then take $900 of it back?
If 100 people is the totality of the population, the cost of bureaucracy for monitoring which of those 10 people actually get the $10 (specifically ensuring a low fraud level) is near or greater than $100, and the social stigma of getting that $10 in the first place is reduced or eliminated, then yes, it could be "easier".
In other words, would it make sense to give everyone the same amount, and take it back from some in taxes, when weighing the cost of the current levels of enforcement and the possible social good done through reduced stigmatization of the poor.
Well, not all 300M are adults - I would assume this hypothetical program would only give to people past a certain age. And I don't think it'd be $30k - it would probably be just enough to survive, but not enough to live a lifestyle you'd enjoy. Maybe it'd scale a little with your age, so you don't end up with a windfall on your 18th birthday.
I'm not sure how'd you account for different costs of living in different areas. But I think the number would be closer to $20k.
Also, it could just be an untaxed amount, no need to muddy things up with that.
It's still a big chunk of money: $4-5T. But You could cancel out a lot of existing services if this was implemented. We're spending $1.2T for pensions ands $0.5T for welfare [1], so some of that could go towards this. But yeah, that's still a lot of money. Not sure where it'd come from. Maybe start with a low amount and scale upwards, hoping to reap some economic benefits from the improvements?
