For the progressives out there.....or the ones that have a sweet spot for Milton Friedman..... ......This is a very intricate article concerning what we as a nation have historically done to help the poor and disenfranchised.....and what we can do in the future.... AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH So how should they be designed? Ideally, to maximize the amount of help available to the poor while minimizing the costs to the larger economy. Anti-poverty spending should therefore involve one simple and explicitly redistributionist program: We should repeal all of our existing anti-poverty programs — TANF, food stamps, housing allowances, energy subsidies, mortgage guarantees, Social Security, Medicare, and so on — and replace them with a so-called "negative income tax." A negative income tax — an idea advocated by Nobel prize-winning economist Milton Friedman — would have two key components: a minimum, guaranteed level of income, and a flat tax rate that is applied to the total amount of income (if any) that a person earns. The net tax owed by any taxpayer would equal his gross tax liability — that is, his earned income multiplied by the tax rate — minus the guaranteed minimum income. If the gross liability were to exceed the guaranteed minimum, the taxpayer would owe the difference. If the gross liability were to fall short of the guaranteed minimum, the government would pay the difference to the taxpayer.
Posted on: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 22:48:17 +0000
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