Replacing U.S. Welfare system with a Basic Income Guarantee

If that was done, the welfare system and BIG might both be able to be done. That might make BIG work, if the health care problem can be addressed, and the education tied to it for job training. Of course, the minimum dollar amount would have to go above $10k.

 

There is no shift...it is because the liabilities are unfunded that the benefits will have to be reduced. Can you not make this connection without someone pointing it out to you? The liabilities of the program are the benefits it pays out...

They are welfare, by any normal definition of the term welfare. Period.

Those who are unemployed make up a minority of single mothers, if you look at the data in post #43. Furthermore, to the point you ignored, currently most of these single-mothers do not get any assistance. They would with a BIG, thus be better off than they are now. Your criticisms are not valid, because with a BIG those problems, though not necessarily fully eradicated, are guaranteed to be addressed better than they are now.

Please point out which programs Cato included that should not have been included.

Try to keep on point. BIG is not a private charity, so comparing public welfare to private charity when this topic is about comparing two different types of public welfare (our current system vs. BIG) is totally irrelevant. You know this, but are not mature enough to concede your error.

I already showed you that the money would be enough to cover all basic living expenses as well as healthcare. How does our current system pay for children who lose parents? They go to an orphanage, or are given to other adults in the family. That has nothing to do with welfare. Child custody laws are totally unaffected by BIG. You are really grasping at straws.

Your hyperbolic rhetoric does not overcome the hard facts. You still have yet to refute anything.

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Absolutely. First and foremost. I am not sure if the amount of money that would bring in was explicitly stated in the article in the OP, but that further increases the viability of the BIG.

 

Seeing I'm the guy who had to explain the farce of unfunded liabilities, and how it does not mean that we have to come up with $X trillion today, but continue the pay-go, and adjust the current collections to meet the needs for benefits to remain high, I don't think you should be asking if I understand. Throwing out a huge number of an "unfunded liability" isn't something you can use as a rhetorical trick on me. I know what the concept is, and will point out the logical fallacy of one trying to use it. I will say that wing nuts are using the term less, because it must not be having the desired effect of placing fear of the numbers behind it.

Social insurance programs are not welfare programs. First, welfare programs are specifically designed to be paid for in the discretionary budget, where recipients have not necessarily contributed. Using your logic, a pension from working at a job is welfare. Or, the job itself is welfare.

So... Poor, single mothers aren't applying for welfare to supplement the low paying jobs they are often forced to take? Then, they've clearly made a choice to not take welfare.

Go back to my first post with the link to Mike Konczal's piece. He listed some of the programs that are not welfare, that Cato erroneously listed as welfare. Plus, Cato overstated welfare spending by $240 billion, hoping to inflate the dollar amounts to make a case for BIG.

You have an agenda to convince people more than discuss, or find the truth. That's fine, but just don't be angry when holes are poked all through the proposal, and BIG doesn't work as well as the current system.

No. You made claims. I suspect you made the claims based on a young, single person, no children for healthcare. As I pointed out, Medicaid is cheaper than private insurance. On a dollar basis, private healthcare insurers can't compete with Medicaid, because Medicaid's administrative costs are lower (another reason for me showing charts on public programs having low costs on that stuff) and has no profit motive to drive costs up so high. So, BIG increases healthcare spending, and getting less bang for the buck, and diverting food, rent and other monies for bills away from that and into healthcare. Or, healthcare is jettisoned to pay for those things.

Except where I refuted BIG...
You should allow facts to seep into your discussion. You might learn something from discussing, instead of covering for the shortcomings the proposal has.

Cato didn't address corporate welfare at all. I'm surprised, because when they fudged the welfare spending by $240 billion, they could have thrown the corporate welfare aspect in, to further skew the argument. But, it's Cato. It's not like they are known for being very bright, even when they are lying.

 

Not quite.

Your link stated that the poverty rate was 17.3 percent in 1965, but didn't provide a link to it. So why should I believe it since that is virtually the only statement that was unsourced and my chart has a source?

But.......lets say that 17.3% figure is correct. You are still talking about about a reduction of about 3% of poverty over a course of almost 50 years. Considering the declines in the years before the Great Society I would say we are not getting any advantage from the trillions spent.

 

The unfunded liabilities problem is not a farce, it is a reality. Your argument blew up in your face.

1. Not all social security recipients have necessarily contributed, nor does the fact that people contribute mean it is not welfare.
2. Medicaid subsidizes a huge portion of the costs of insurance. The amount people pay is not the amount the care costs.

Or, the system does not allow them to take welfare, or they do not know about it because there are so many different programs, or other countless reasons. A BIG would alleviate all of those problems.

No he didn't. Feel free to post them, and then I will explain why you are wrong again.

My agenda is to provide a system that is better than what we have now. I believe a BIG would do so. So far, all of your arguments to the contrary have been proven false or irrelevant.

You keep rehashing this same argument, but it has already been thoroughly refuted. You continually ignore that medicaid is only cheap because government subsidizes the costs. A BIG would provide the same subsidy, but with more flexibility. Furthermore, research has shown that medicaid provides worse access and lower quality care than private insurers. I want poorer people to have access to higher quality care, you want to keep them at a lower level with medicaid.
http://www.heritage.org/research/re...ccess-and-outcomes-than-the-privately-insured

Your refutation was debunked as either illogical or not based in fact.

The CATO article did mention closing tax subsidies and the like for business. If anything, CATO overestimated how expensive BIG would be. That only helps my argument.

What is clear to me from this argument is that you are a partisan hack. If I had posted the exact same topic but with an article from source you consider your views to be aligned with, you would have probably praised it. But you see the words CATO and immediately turn on your partisan blinders. It is sad--people like you are the reason this country never gets anything done.

 

Okay I'm a good example I get Medicaid, SSI, SNAP and a Phone the total benefits.

I get $8552 per year is my SSI income.

Medicaid and its nothing out of pocket for me is $6000 a year roughly for my HMO plan and that includes expensive drugs like Lantus Insulin.

SNAP I get $720 a year.

My phone is about $360 a year I'm guessing its pretty basic service but fine.

For $15,632 not including some charity help like one gives me a monthly bus pass and I get some other help from time to time.

Your saying I get $10,000 and have to cover most of this myself and this is with me living with my father not getting Section 8 or some kind of housing help. Are you insane it might be fine for a healthy young person but no health plan would be affordable and would also leave money for other things and I cannot work, this by both the state and Federal government agreeing on that enough to survive without government help. I'm grateful for the help I get from everyone but your basically stripping me if you do this of likely half my benefits since I pay nothing for health care now the major hit would be there.

I'm not alone for the seriously disabled, sick and poor elderly (many from being on disability long term) this would be bad unless you keep Medicaid or some similar system which seems not to be the case.

 

We might disagree on details but in principle I like the idea. I would add based on good free market principles that folks should pay the costs of what they use. A gasoline tax would help toward that goal. The pool of money from that tax could then be kicked back to citizens on an equal basis killing two birds with one stone. Providing income with greater benefit going to low users and environmentally slowing the growth of AGW.

One thing I've found that faux free marketers avoid is the associated matter of RCP ie Real Cost Pricing. If you aren't paying the real cost for a product or service you are being subsidized(Another name for it is welfare). In the case of fossil fuel that is huge. If you are for real then you should want to pay the full cost of filling your tank. But most free marketers I've found when it comes to RCP and gas aren't for real.

 

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pove...Poverty_Rate_1959_to_2011._United_States..PNG

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pove...Rates_by_Age_1959_to_2011._United_States..PNG

Let's just remember two things... The poverty rate was far higher before the New Deal. And during the Clinton Presidency, poverty dropped to 11%, as jobs were plentiful and fewer people relied on welfare. The Bush years saw it rise. And the Bush/GOP economy morphed into the Great Recession, which had an adverse effect. Not to mention, welfare benefits are lower in real dollars compared to the Clinton era. Still, the welfare system sees certain things, like healthcare for the poor, help for housing, and dollars that can be used for food but not other things, preserved, which the BIG proposals can't do.

The thing I'd like to see is to enact a universal single payer health care system, which would free up dollars for consumption and investment. The ACA is an improvement, but fell far short of what we really could have done to reduce poverty and see job growth, as single payer is cheaper than private insurance. When it comes down to it, deregulation has been the cause of the last three recessions, with the last one being a massive cluster(*)(*)(*)(*). Jobs are preferable to welfare, but we need to see some of the inequality stanched. I'm a capitalist, so I know that we can't eat the rich to end inequality, because there's always going to be, and always should be, some inequality. But, without an economy using people as a means to earn good paying jobs, poverty will be a larger problem. And a welfare system is showing itself to be a necessity.

 

I believe we merely need more Faith in the execution of our own laws regarding the concept of employment at will.

 

It's a farce because a) you didn't seem to understand what it was (and might still not even after having it explained to you) and b) it's not an unfunded liability, because if the fund can only see a portion of today's benefits paid, then it's not unfunded. It's merely reduced benefit. You might want to learn that before showing ignorance on it.

The recipients, even if they did not contribute directly, like a stay at home spouse, had their spouse pay into the social insurance. And you have not shown where it's part of US welfare spending once, in spite of me providing links and stats throughout our exchanges, while you keep providing fluff and your opinion.

Which still makes no difference in what I said about Medicaid costing less than private insurance. Particularly when out of pocket expenses are factored in. Medicaid is still cheaper, no matter how it's sliced. The subsidization is cheaper than the premium based insurance. As, one of my earlier links proved.

Unfounded assertions. All of them.

I can't make you read.

Yet, you've been unable to counter my points with any facts.

You just posted an outright falsehood.

Comparing the subsidy to the private insurance, it is cheaper via Medicaid. I've already proven that and you've been unable to refute it.

False. You'd be placing someone into a more expensive private insurance policy, if they have any money to pay for it via BIG.

false. You need to link to relevant sources.
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/05/01/1948081/medicaid-provides-better-insurance/

Yet another outright falsehood posted by you. A pattern is emerging.

Yet, as was pointed out in the links I provided, the wealthy will shut that down, and Cato is still basing their costs by overestimating the welfare spending by $240 billion dollars to begin with.

Cato needs to delve into facts, and not their ideological bull(*)(*)(*)(*). It's why they lose credibility, when they can't keep honest. I will say that they are marginally better than Heritage, who are barely above fairy tales.
Like I said, if you can bother to bring factual data, I'll be glad to discuss it. But this nonsense of you being unable or unwilling to present facts, and then blaming me for your shortcomings is silly.

 

Paul Ryan's plan isn't all that dissimilar from the BIG proposal on health care...
http://m.thefiscaltimes.com/fiscalt...-plan-wont-cut-costs,53457d49025312186cf36fc9

 

I'm for a single payer public insurance system with 2 provisos.
1. It should have a fixed cost limit to ward off cost escalation, say 10 % of GDP.

2. A group of independent medical experts should determine a ladder of medical priorities to head off competition between the various medical needs lobbies.

 

It works everywhere in the world better than the system we had in the US that Reagan made law.
And it works in the US, seeing Medicare and Medicaid provide service at lower costs.

 

Oh I get it. You're not interested in the thread topic, you just want to make some partisan points (poorly I may add) and hawk national healthcare; which has nothing to do with this topic. Your interests are probably more appropriate to some DNC meeting to work on the 2016 party platform.

As for your chart, I'm unclear what point of mine you think it contradicts.



This chart matches up and confirms what I've already said.

 

Ok. Facts are partisan to you. That's fine. I am partisan, as is everyone. One thing I'm not is too wedded to an ideology, and all too often ideology blocks facts from getting through, as we've seen from BIG supporters.

Anyway, poverty rates have fluctuated mostly from the availability of good paying jobs. So, we're naturally going to see more poverty from things like the housing bubble bursting, and people out of work for long periods of time through no fault of their own. The welfare system reduced the suffering we'd have seen without it. So, the poverty isn't as severe now, as it was before the Great Society, New Deal and Nixon's welfare program, with the help available to people now. That said, the investment we've made was far better than not doing it.

 

I'm not a BIG supporter although I am interested in the concept. I'm also not the one who decided to push national healthcare in this thread.

 

My thought? LOL

 

I generally agree with the above. My only confusion is your talk about a gasoline tax. They already exist in the United States.

 

You keep repeating your same assertions that have already been debunked.

1. You say CATO overestimated the cost of current welfare. They did not. Your number underestimates the cost by ignoring a chunk of welfare programs as well as ignoring state and local welfare. You refuse to point out a single program CATO included that you feel should not be included and explain why.

2. You won't even admit that social security and medicaid are welfare programs--a completely nonsensical position, showing that you either do not have a clue what welfare means, or you do not have a clue how these programs work.

3. You keep saying medicaid is cheaper than private insurance. Yet you ignore the differences in quality between medicaid and private insurance. If you want to compare prices, you need to compare medicaid and a private insurance plan of a similar quality with similar benefits. Comparing a low quality insurance (medicaid) to higher quality insurance (the average private insurance plan) is comparing apples to oranges. You also do not take into consideration the amount of money the government pays per person for medicaid in addition to what the recipients pay in premiums.

That's the extent of this discussion, and you are just on a loop repeating the same thing over and over. Unless you have something new to bring to the table, I'm not going to entertain your debunked arguments any further.

 

Okay lets be straight Medicaid is not insurance in design its a benefit of the government, originally and evolved to cover the most vulnerable poor people with a way to get medical care and treatment in Florida a narrow group: poor elderly in dual Medicare-Medicaid programs, pregnant women up to six months after giving birth, children of the poor and the disabled (people on SSI). Here they do put us in an HMO and so it is in fact insurance but save for my primary care home I get no say in who I see and limited treatment options for care but its far better than nothing. So it is welfare and since they pay doctors less than Medicare in most cases its not like providers beat the door down to accept patients even the HMO's with a bit of an incentive can keep only enough to assure meeting the demand with small margins of safety. Other states like California its a critical problem from people on it there who were on Traditional Medicaid now that the ACA Expansion patients are flooding the system. It is welfare just largely under the old model one that is not to much criticized even by Conservatives.

And Social Security is a welfare system many on it get far more back than they put in, people on SSI get a benefit for life without putting sometimes anything in at all and those on SSDI also get far more back than they put in. Again its popular welfare and largely supported by most but is welfare.

The basic issue and I pointed it out going to a system like was proposed would cripple my modest lifestyle I get as a disabled person and if my father passes on I will need housing help to, the proposed amount will not meet my needs and I cannot work at any serious career group I need the society to help me OR just put me down it would be more merciful than slowly starving and getting sick. For some of us these programs are simple they keep us alive, give us a minimal but comfortable life and the needed care to avoid suffering (my pain management alone is something I feel is vital). And I'm very grateful and when I get SSI and SNAP I'll be more grateful to everyone. But I know its welfare and a handout system.

 

Exactly. If that doesn't put to rest the absurd myth that those two programs are not welfare, nothing will. Great explanation.

Under a BIG, you would get $10,000 per year. The maximum SSI yearly amount is $8,657.26. Average monthly benefits under SNAP are $133.85 per person, or about $1606 per year. That brings the total to $10,263 per year. That is essentially the same as a $10,000 BIG. And you mention your father. Unless you come from a very wealthy family, he will also have an additional $10,000, which he can use to support you. That means you would have nearly double the financial support as under the current system.

 

Medicaid, right now I'm in a special diabetic program this includes two kinds of insulin one expensive my slow acting one and pain medication management which must be done supervised to prevent addiction. I also need laser eye treatments and monitoring. Heart management for congestive heart failure. Physical therapy for my hands. A power wheelchair. In simple terms its the amount listed minus health care and that for me can be brutal in costs which I pay nothing for now and I know taxpayers are and I'm grateful but its not something easy to replace as a benefit.

 

You seem to be an extremely rare case. I don't know how much your total government support is, but assuming it is more than $10,000 per year, and assuming you need all of that to survive, it is not enough to discredit BIG, for there are even more examples of people who are in bad shape in the current system that would benefit from a BIG.

For such extreme cases, the government could provide additional benefits under a BIG. And perhaps the focus should be on preventing these problems in the first place, rather than subsidizing them.

 

And there is the slippery slope! For such extreme cases...

Those extreme cases would put us right back in the situation we have now, plus 10K a year.

 

Not true. Those extreme cases would put us with a BIG, but one where someone with an extreme disability (to the point where they can't work at all or support themselves in any way) would get an additional stipend. That is a far cry from what we have now.