Milton Friedman's Basic Income

It's as Moses says in The Ten Commandments: "A city is made from brick. The strong make many, the weak make few, the dead make none."



We've known about this for how long? People on the left like to have a permanent underclass from whom to extract votes and people on the right believe the asinine notion that starvation is a good motivation to make people work. No, it's not, it's a shitty motivation. People who have all their basic needs met work harder, have more enthusiasm to work, and reinvest more into the economy. That's not me saying it, that's Adam Smith saying it. That's Milton Friedman saying it. I don't care what Rust Lumbar or Sean Hannity, who owns Section 8 housing yet pretends to be a regular blue collar guy, think. They're snakes and vermin.



Friedman suggested something he called a "negative income tax". Anyone making below what was at the time a living wage ($3,000 a year, or $21,000 a year today) would be given the difference up to half ($1,500 or $10,600). The minimum amount never changes. With welfare today if you're collecting and you have a job you're penalised, which disincentivises people on welfare to work. On Friedman's plan the minimum amount is guaranteed, so you can work and earn more and never have to worry about having money taken away from you.