That guaranteed income thing.....it's been done, and proved another Liberal failure....
- The government conducted a study, 1971-1978 known as the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment, or SIME-DIME, in which low income families were give a guaranteed income, a welfare package with everything liberal policy makers could hope for. Result: for every dollar of extra welfare given, low income recipients reduced their labor by 80 cents. http://www.policyarchive.org/handle/10207/bitstreams/12794.pdf
[The results for husbands show that the combination of negative income tax plans tested in SIME/DIME — which, as already mentioned, represents on average a relatively generous cash transfer program with a guarantee of 115% of the poverty line and a tax rate of 50% — has a significant negative effect on hours worked per year.
Overview of the Final Report of the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment]
a. Further results: dissolution of families: “This conclusion was unambiguously unfavorable to advocates of a negative income tax that would cover married couples, for two important reasons. First, increased
marital breakups among the poor would increase the numbers on
welfare and the amount of transfer payments, principally because the
separated wife and children would receive higher transfer payments.
Second, marital dissolutions and the usual accompanying absence of
fathers from households with children are generally considered unfavorable outcomes regardless of whether or not the welfare rolls increase.”
http://www.bos.frb.org/economic/conf/conf30/conf30c.pdf
b. “When families received guaranteed income at 90% of the poverty level, there was a 43% increase in black family dissolution and a 63% increase in white family dissolution. At 125% of the poverty levels, dissolutions were 75% and 40%.” Robert B. Carleson, “Government Is The Problem,” p. 57.
Actually I first heard about it in Switzerland, and as conservative as I am, it didn't sound like a bad idea. The catch is everybody would get this universal income, but it would be the elimination of all social programs.
In other words you get this money and do what you want, but if you F up or don't plan for the future, too bad, starve to death.
Our current social programs come with all kinds of problems. We have lowlifes living off them when they could otherwise work, moving into fancy neighborhoods that never wanted them in the first place, theft that takes place in these programs by the billions every year, and this dichotomy between the working and the users.
Universal income as a replacement to our social programs brings a solution to a lot of long standing problems. I believe the equivalent of their money equaled about 18K of US dollars.
So okay, you are a lowlife that doesn't want to work, so you take your 18K and do as you like. But because there is no HUD, you have to provide housing for yourself. Because there are no food stamps, you have to provide for your own food. Because there is no Medicaid, you have to provide for your own medical care. There are no benefits for having children either.
This would bring working parents together. 36K combined can give you these things and you don't even have to work. If you have kids, that could be a problem, so then you would have to get a job if you wanted kids too. Working people could no longer complain about what the non-working are getting because working couples get this 36K just like the non-working.
If a working couple continues to work, that 36K could buy them great health insurance if they don't have any. It could pay for the cost of college for their kids. It could encourage investments and spending. A lot of problems solved with Universal Income.