Charles Murray, a member of the American Enterprise Institute, has a new book out called “In Our Hands : A Plan To Replace The Welfare State.” In it he argues that all social programs (Welfare, Social Security, Medicaid, Medicair, Food Stamps, etc.) should be done away with and instead be replaced by a $10,000 a year, tax-free, check to each person living below the poverty line. I haven’t read the book and I haven’t computed the numbers, but I think the main idea is solid.
Just give each person living below the poverty line a check for $10,000 a year, sounds good. Of course the poverty line could be adjusted to something reasonable, and we could have a reasonable progressive policy where the less you make the more you get. Just average it at $10,000 per year per person living below the poverty line. This would eliminate bureaucracy, promote freedom, and people could decide for themselves how best to spend their money. They might spend it on buying a new car to get to work, taking some classes, saving money for their retirement, sending their kids to a better school, or taking a few days off a week to find a better paying job.
I have a suspicion some of you are saying to yourselves, “You can’t do that, people might spend the money on beer and cigarettes.” I would say that is elitism. Basically the idea is that people, in this case the poor, are generally stupid and the elite, this case the bureaucrats, need to decide what’s best for them and tell them how to spend their money. More freedom is always good as long as it doesn’t impose on another’s freedom.
I highly doubt many would want to go along with this idea. There’s an old expression, “If there’s a shipwreck, at least I own the wreckage.” Making people give up their own power to pass it on to individuals is always difficult, even if their power is for the purpose of helping those individuals.
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