Guarantee all Americans an income

BamainBoston said:

Talk about whistling past the graveyard. Those "program specific revenues" are approaching permanent deficit, and will soon fall well short of what is needed to maintain them. Social Security already spends far more than it takes in. Social Security and Medicare will push annual deficits to a trillion by the end of the year, and towards 4 trillion a year as the full baby boomer rush hits us.

And only a liberal would tell us that a 200 billion deficit has a "relatively small" impact.

Click to expand...

I believe your post said the "cost" was 2 trillion. I am glad to set the record straight. Nothing personal Mitt er.... I mean Boston.

seebell said:

I support reform But probably in a different manner than you do.

While it is literally true that mandatory spending exceeds $2 trillion, that figure is grossly misleading, because it ignores program-specific revenues. Social Security and Medicare are social-insurance schemes that are primarily funded by payroll taxes. Lots of money passes through those programs, but the net impact on the federal budget is relatively small (less than $200 billion last year).
According to the Congressional Budget Office, Social Security expenditures were $768 billion and Medicare expenditures were $551 billion in 2012. (The Social Security Administration reports spending of $786 billion; I cannot resolve that discrepancy.) However, excluding the effects of the payroll tax holiday, Social Security was overfunded. Revenue from the FICA payroll tax, interest on the Social Security Trust Fund, and taxation of benefits totaled $840 billion. Medicare ran a deficit, but spending of $551 billion was offset by total receipts of $334 billion, including payroll taxes and premiums paid by participants. On a net basis, the Social Security and Medicare combined deficit was well under $200 billion.

Click to expand...

I wonder how much of that money goes back to the federal government when they spend it at Bob's grocery store etc...

Remember that whenever the government provides $1 to Paul it has to take $1.50 from Peter. Government is the most inefficient mugger ever.

Bodhisattva said:

Remember that whenever the government provides $1 to Paul it has to take $1.50 from Peter. Government is the most inefficient mugger ever.

Click to expand...

The real question is why its so inefficient? The answer to the problem is civil service reform. You work there and probably see it every minute of every day. No accountability! People sit around all day doing as little as possible. No reward for doing a good job, a better job than the slacker sitting next to you. It takes 5 people to do the job of 3.

Bodhisattva said:

Remember that whenever the government provides $1 to Paul it has to take $1.50 from Peter. Government is the most inefficient mugger ever.

Click to expand...

Peter is obviously not patriotic and hates the poor.

Bamaro said:

The real question is why its so inefficient? The answer to the problem is civil service reform. You work there and probably see it every minute of every day. No accountability! People sit around all day doing as little as possible. No reward for doing a good job, a better job than the slacker sitting next to you. It takes 5 people to do the job of 3.

Click to expand...

This is what happens when job creation is more important than actual productivity.

Bamaro said:

The real question is why its so inefficient? The answer to the problem is civil service reform. You work there and probably see it every minute of every day. No accountability! People sit around all day doing as little as possible. No reward for doing a good job, a better job than the slacker sitting next to you. It takes 5 people to do the job of 3.

Click to expand...

It is the nature of government bureaucracies to be inefficient. There are no market forces to make them behave otherwise. Some guys with power who think they're smart make up the rules and procedures. There are so many layers that one has to go through to get the most basic thing done. Case in point, my office has a total of seven printers. We now have six of them that don't work. Anywhere else this would have been taken care of in half a day - go to Office Depot, buy some printers and hook them up. Well, in the government you have to get quotes from approved vendors (takes a few weeks to make sure that you have enough quotes and that small businesses are participating) for approved machines (signed off by a different office)* that can be used with the network (a different office with their own set of approval rules)* on an approved contract vehicle (our contracting office is in Iowa and they've balked at the first two cost efficient proposals our office has made). We're two months into being down to our last printer and we still don't have a solution that satisfies all the different sub-bureaucracies involved. If I was to guess I'd say we have several more weeks of waiting and will have to pay at least $20k more than we originally planned. So, trying to buy good printers at a low cost quickly is impossible.

I've seen the same thing time- and cost-wise with acquiring government mobile phones for staff use.

I've seen the same thing with laptop purchases. We ended up buying double what we needed, so half the laptops can be stored in some government warehouse until they become obsolete.

So, is there any wonder that the government wastes countless millions of dollars on ..... well, everything.

And every time I attend a government conference/symposium on efficiency the discussion always involves adding more layers of bureaucracy. It's the exact opposite of what needs to be done.

*Edit: Also note that the list of approved printers to buy is not the same as the list of approved printers for the network. Printers that are on only one list are useless, but they are there nonetheless.

BamainBoston said:

Welfare already costs over a trillion, and you can throw in another 200 billion for SSDI. The standard deduction for taxpayers is currently around $6,000 per individual. And that 2.4 trillion includes payments to the elderly, so if you assume part of this would come out of Social Security, you wouldn't spend more money each year than we do now. Take out the elderly all together, and you are down to around 1.75 trillion a year.

Click to expand...

I'd pay for bullets to use on the deadbeats to solve the problem. It'd be more economical. .

Yes, I'm kidding NSA

Bodhisattva said:

Remember that whenever the government provides $1 to Paul it has to take $1.50 from Peter. Government is the most inefficient mugger ever.

Click to expand...

Does the multiplier effect apply here, or does the decrease in demand, because of taxes, cancel it out?

BamainBoston said:

I've become pretty convinced the multiplier effect is a myth. Given how much money our government spends, if it weren't, we should be more prosperous than ever.

Click to expand...

Add to that underweighted variables that affect the economy. I am no economist, but it doesn't take one to see where a Keynsian model falls apart when people do not behave as expected. I am not about to go on a spending spree when I think my government is way to far in debt.

A few years ago Nancy Pelosi talked about how government spending was a great net creator of wealth. Funny how we have so much debt.

So much of what government spends money on is little more than paying one group to dig holes and then paying another group to fill in the holes. There's no added value. One sub-bureaucracy I deal with all the time does nothing but sign off on this one document I have to create for every contract action. The document requires 12 signatures; it takes each person up to a week to get around to signing. So, it could take up to three months to get this document staffed once I submit it. Funny thing is, this document (like many of the other documents) serves no purpose. It was created to monitor service contract during the Iraq war. That's over and my contracts have nothing to do with any war effort. So, taking this document and others into account, when it's time to renew or adjust contracts to meet evolving requirements, I must do so many, many months in advance. That's not really possible, so we are constantly modifying contracts, which means going through the near-endless bureaucratic processes in perpetuity. It's a really stupid and wasteful way to do things. Wars are temporary; bad policy is forever.

Additional thought: To put things in perspective. When I worked in the private sector for the home builder, the company could buy land, develop the land, build houses and sell them faster than some of the contracts I have take to work their way through the bureaucracy. Is there any doubt the private sector creates real jobs that add value and is far more efficient than the government?

Bamaro said:

The real question is why its so inefficient? The answer to the problem is civil service reform. You work there and probably see it every minute of every day. No accountability! People sit around all day doing as little as possible. No reward for doing a good job, a better job than the slacker sitting next to you. It takes 5 people to do the job of 1.

Click to expand...

You ever been to the SS office? And apart from the "slacking", two people can go in and apply for disability benefits (which neither deserve); one gets them, one does not. That not only steals from us paying for the one who gets the benefits, but also it's my understanding (legals on here correct me if I'm wrong) that if the one denied appeals with a lawyer and wins, we get stolen from again by having to pay attorney's fees on top of the illicit benefits.
"Inefficient" is a much-too-polite description. Chronic thieves should be hung like in the good old days.

BamainBoston said:

I've become pretty convinced the multiplier effect is a myth. Given how much money our government spends, if it weren't, we should be more prosperous than ever.

Click to expand...

I would agree with you the exceptions being welfare, food stamps, and military spending.

BamainBoston said:

Well, honestly, that's a problem with any reform you pass. It would require the diligence of the American voter to prevent it. It's the same argument you hear against replacing the income tax with a national sales tax--you'd just end up with both. Or with tax reform that lowers the rates while eliminating deductions--they'd just raise the rates again.

As to the philosophical objections, I certainly hear them, and I'm not saying we should do this. But, I do think conservatives need to just accept the fact that the safety net isn't going away, and I'm not even sure we'd want it to. Most people agree with the safety net in principle; it's all the negative externalities that they hate. That's the advantage of this "guaranteed income" (though, for messaging sake, I wouldn't call it that). It doesn't punish work; everyone gets it whether they work or not. It doesn't incentivize dependency for the same reason. And it doesn't have the effect we are now seeing with Obamacare where the cost of working is so great in reduced government support that it doesn't make logical sense to even try and get out of the system. And that's why some of the most conservative thinkers out there--Charles Murray springing to mind immediately--are starting to advocate for it.

To do 10,000 per adult would cost you 2.4 trillion a year.

Click to expand...

Ya reckon China would be OK with that?

wouldnt it be cheaper to just let them die? boom. problem solved.

gmart74 said:

wouldnt it be cheaper to just let them die? boom. problem solved.

Click to expand...

We have the answer, now all we got to do is put the plan in place.

BamaPokerplayer said:

We have the answer, now all we got to do is put the plan in place.

Click to expand...

We can create a one-payer health care program, and when people have expensive treatments necessary, we can have a panel that decides yea or nay. We can call them death panels. And boom. Problems all solved.

gmart74 said:

wouldnt it be cheaper to just let them die? boom. problem solved.

Click to expand...

...and for those who live give them soylent green instead of food stamps.

GreatDanish said:

We can create a one-payer health care program, and when people have expensive treatments necessary, we can have a panel that decides yea or nay. We can call them death panels. And boom. Problems all solved.

Click to expand...

I have a feeling the supplemental insurance market is about to boom.

Apparently, guaranteeing a spouse would be more effective:

Ignoring an Inequality Culprit: Single-Parent Families

The two-parent family has declined rapidly in recent decades. In 1960, more than 76% of African-Americans and nearly 97% of whites were born to married couples. Today the percentage is 30% for blacks and 70% for whites. The out-of-wedlock birthrate for Hispanics surpassed 50% in 2006. This trend, coupled with high divorce rates, means that roughly 25% of American children now live in single-parent homes, twice the percentage in Europe (12%). Roughly a third of American children live apart from their fathers.

Click to expand...

More than 20% of children in single-parent families live in poverty long-term, compared with 2% of those raised in two-parent families, according to education-policy analyst Mitch Pearlstein's 2011 book "From Family Collapse to America's Decline." The poverty rate would be 25% lower if today's family structure resembled that of 1970, according to the 2009 report "Creating an Opportunity Society" from Brookings Institution analysts Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill. A 2006 article in the journal Demography by Penn State sociologist Molly Martin estimates that 41% of the economic inequality created between 1976-2000 was the result of changed family structure.

Click to expand...