Guaranteed Minimum Income
 

...or a negative income tax. Reason has a bare-bones article on the subject. Its a left-libertarian thing. The social contract is important but minimizing government coercion is important as well.

The idea would be to replace welfare with cash payments to everyone or a negative income tax based on the current system. No more humiliation of drug testing etc... improved efficiency in distribution. There is an industry built around the welfare system. Is it truly necessary? Does it serve itself more than citizens.

Some places drug test if you receive food stamp cards, and/or vouchers...

...you think they ain't gonna require drug testing for cash payments?!

Not if every single person in the country gets them...

I feel like I see this subject line in spam a lot.

One thing that always makes me scratch my head is how the amount the gummint spends on poverty is much more than is needed to solve it. If you just gave everyone under the poverty line enough money to be AT the poverty line, that would be less expensive than setting up all the bureaucracies, that eat up as much as 2/3rds of the money intended to help.

Would we still get our Obama phones? I recently found out from the VA that I qualify for one since my income is non-taxable. No joke

The whole point of going this direction is to eliminate coercion, increase efficiency, and stop treating the poor as if they're children. I know the GOP loves to punish the poor but that impulse may not run so deep with the population at large. Interesting factoid from the article: "...and in Arizona 87,000 screenings between 2009 and 2012 yielded one positive test result."

One of the great worries with welfare is the suppression of motivation to work. I see the flip side, we all know talented people whose life circumstances prevent them from taking a chance on their dream. How many people have the energy to start their small business while working full time at MallWart?

It's an interesting idea, but I question some of the math--they say the current welfare program costs four times more than it would cost to take everyone currently in poverty and just give them the money to raise them to the poverty line. Yet what the article is suggesting is not that we give the money to just those people, but to every American. They rightfully point out that the base has to remain there even as you start to earn your first dollar, and your second, otherwise there would be no incentive to start working your way up.

It seems like one of the other people quoted in the article is saying the money could start tapering slowly after you are making over $25,000 a year, but it still couldn't be dollar-for-dollar. Working more always has to net you more money than staying where you are. I'd be interested to see how the total cost of that program compares to the price of the current welfare system.

The number crunching is important and complex. Do we include Social Security? That's where you lose the people who actually vote.

You mean the Reagan phone? Don't believe everything conservatives tell you.

They could just have a job that pays a living wage...

This!

Don't know how it works in the US, but over here the cost of in work benefits far outweighs the cost of unemployment benefits. There are minimum wage laws, but the minimum wage is not enough to live on even if both adults in a house are working full time. A situation made even worse by the rise of the 'zero hour contract'.

The argument given against a legally enforced living wage, as opposed to minimum wage, is that it would force many companies to cut staff, or discourage them from hiring more staff. Unemployment would rise. Similarly, the zero hour contracts are justified on the basis of flexibility for companies to only pay for work when it is needed, rather than having to hire and fire staff according to the waxing and waning of their businesses. Better that people have jobs, however inadequate, than not have jobs.

The trouble is that this now means the tax payer is effectively subsidising the staffing costs for large numbers of companies. They pay a pittance, and their employee makes up the shortfall to subsistance through tax credits and housing benefit, or free school meals for low income children.

Means tested benefits should be for people who are unable to be economically active. People who have reached the age of retirement, people who are out of work, people who are disabled from work.

It is a fucking disgrace that they have to be given to people in full time jobs so that they can afford to put food on the table and use their central heating in winter.

If a business cannot afford to pay a fair wage to its workers, then it is not a viable business. No more than a business that cannot afford to pay its business taxes or its ground rent.

Where does this job come from? The guaranteed minimum covers both the unemployed (including unemployable), poorly employed, and effectively employed. It has the advantage of being a fairer distribution much like national health care would be. I'm not a fan of Walmart sponging off government health benefits, that's why I'd prefer full on national health care to the direction we've gone. This subsidy to all individuals should create a more dynamic economy rather than the stagnation of make-work or the subsidizing of only the under-paid. ...unless I misunderstand your point.

I believe that it would be better if the employable were employed, even if there were a taxpayer funded minimum. The employable would benefit by (hopefully) developing good work habits and skills, and by being exposed to role models who contribute to society. Employers would benefit by having more workers. Tax payers would benefit by getting something for their tax investment.