Milton Friedman - The Negative Income Tax

Basic Income isn't Libertarian at all. Friedman wasn't a Basic Income proponent. He was a proponent of negative taxation. He was only interested in being consistent with the way we treat income tax and welfare. He felt that the welfare manager's job of determining exactly how to administer relief to recipients was something that couldn't be done properly. He preferred just giving cash based upon income levels on a sliding scale. [this video] Given the abuse of the Welfare system over the half century since Friedman supported negative taxation, I don't doubt that he would have different views and controls for such a system were he alive today. A lot of ideas sounded good 50 or 100 years ago that we have tried but have failed. It doesn't mean we should keep trying them.

It's like we are the same person. Or maybe we just live in the same country :) It's worth mentioning that the only libertarian I know who has been able to argue with me to my satisfaction remarkably agrees with me on "what needs to be done." I suspect political philosophy is somewhat like religion: any sufficiently dedicated person can use any sufficiently developed philosophy to support any sufficiently developed plan. Here's my list. What's yours? 1. Campaign finance reform. Turn the bribing policy from "mandatory bribes" to "optional bribes." Going to "no bribes" is probably too difficult (how to close the "cushy job upon retirement" loophole?) 2. Legislative and judicial policy focused on creating competitive markets, not placating business (#1 necessary for #2) 3. Single-payer healthcare 4. Basic income (Milton Friedman: [this video] )

I cannot find a "white paper" or policy outline on UBI. I have read OpEds on the subject in the NYT and WSJ and watched Milton Friedman explaining his "negative income tax" on YouTube and that has been the most detailed plan of all.* Therein Friedman explains how welfare would be erased and a cash payout of $3,000 (circa 1968 mind you) to those making no income whatsoever. In todays dollars that figure would be $20,806.29 If the recipient made only $2,000 that year they would receive of a check of $1,000. Is that workable today? The UBI enthusiasts never point to how it is going to get paid. * [this video] [link]

Milton Friedman argued for essentially UBI (he called it "negative income tax") 50 years ago[1]. Unfortunately, selling the American voter on anything "unearned" (I realize the U stands for "universal") that's going to come out of "my taxes" is going to be a long and uphill effort, especially when the mindset of the current administration[2] is in the other direction: > Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue says the administration thinks these people should be able to get jobs, especially now that the nation's unemployment rate is the lowest it has been in years. > "People believe that able-bodied people who can work, should work," Tennessee Republican Rep. Scott Desjarlais told Perdue, "Do you have any idea why there might be so much pushback and concerns on this measure?" > "I have no clue," Perdue responded. I don't see how we get from there to: "Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a form of social security that guarantees a certain amount of money to every citizen within a given governed population, without having to pass a test or fulfill a work requirement."[3] Fox News can't even discuss UBI without dismissing it out of hand with contempt and mockery[4]. We've got a ways to go to get back even to GWB's "compassionate conservatism," much less a serious discussion of UBI. I realize how pessimistic I seem. I'm actually pretty excited by some of the current candidates. I think a couple of the candidates[5] have it right when they argue our first priority has to be to restore demo

>How exactly is this supposed to work? The government prints money and gives it away for free, nobody has to work? Given the tremendous inflation occurring because of non-universal benefits, UBI pretty well died as a subject. Everything the anti-UBI people have said would happen, is happening. So if it were universal, it would be worse than this. Trying to discuss UBI is complex because every single attempt at it has failed. There is a simplistic idea of UBI = $1000/month to every single person. Just start delivering cheques and see what happens? Everyone earns $1000 more and everyone bumps up in the progressive tax and hopefully you tax enough to keep the budget balanced and inflation under control? We know this doesn't work now. MMT is dead as a subject. We must do much more than just free money. Lets look deeper. What if we dismantle every single safety net. Welfare goes away, employment insurance, child benefits, old age pensions, indigenous UBI, etc. These all go away. We take those budgets and combine them and disperse equally. In essence what happens is that from a government budget point of view we aren't broke. At exactly the same time we also make a constitutional amendment requiring the government to balance the budget. What is this exactly? It's a negative income tax that Milton Friedman recommended ages ago.. [this video]

The exact same thing happened with Reaganomics/Supply Side Economics. The economic brains behind these ideas was Milton Friedman, and while he did strongly and aggressively advocate for supply side economics, he also had quite a lot about to say the consumer side of things and advocate for, among other things, a negative income tax [1] that in practical terms is essentially a basic income that solves many of the major problems with things like welfare. I'm not advocating for a basic income (or supply side economics), but simply emphasizing that what you said is completely true and one of the many risks of MMT. Even if MMT might be theoretically viable, in practice it's going to be interpreted as something not far from a pseudo-intellectual justification for arbitrary levels of debt/monetary inflation. [1] - [this video]