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We are over 30 trillion dollars in debt. Extending the U.S. welfare system to the entire planet is not feasible.
You should have to be a *net* taxpayer to come here. You should have to pay catchup Social Security tax in order to get citizenship. And it is the job of immigrants to integrate into U.S. society, not the other way. around. (An…
We are over 30 trillion dollars in debt. Extending the U.S. welfare system to the entire planet is not feasible.
You should have to be a *net* taxpayer to come here. You should have to pay catchup Social Security tax in order to get citizenship. And it is the job of immigrants to integrate into U.S. society, not the other way. around. (And the converse is true for U.S. expats...)
I can be this selfish about keeping the U.S. for the cultures that founded the U.S. and still be an
international saint compared to the current administration. Stop dropping so many bombs to "spread democracy." Stop the drugs at the border; don't fund wars in the jungle to get rid of coca bushes. Don't buy oil on the international market; poor countries need that oil. Drill here until we truly have a replacement for oil. (If you're worried about carbon emissions, the first place to start is to replace coal plants with nuclear power plants.)
I agree in general with your ideas, though not on some of the specifics. I don't think continuing to prosecute the drug war is a good idea, and I don't think a UBI is a good idea. To solve the "welfare cliff" problem, I'd more suggest not killing welfare benefits as early or as sharply. Make it a 2:1 or 3:1 (or some other ratio I'm not in the mood to do the math on right now) so that your welfare dollars drop off by 1 for every 2 or 3 you earn, for example. My primary objective to the drug war continuation (aside from the fact that it's entirely unconstitutional) is that it exacerbates the missing fathers problem. I am in full accord with your thoughts on immigration.
I'm with Timothy Leary on the recreational drug issue. Make the lighter drugs over the counter, and require a license for the harder drugs. Though I have to admit as I get older, I tend to think the license requirements for fentanyl and meth would be effective illegality for most people. On the other hand, dilute forms of natural opium and coca leaf should be available for those who can handle their high.
But there is a difference between what I want and what is politically feasible. So my fallback is IF you are going to make a drug illegal, do the enforcement at the border, not in other countries or in residential neighborhoods.
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I prefer a citizen dividend to assorted tax deductions in part because it simplifies life for employers. Flat tax with prebate for 95+ percent of the country. Additional brackets for the elite.
This was the original intent behind the income tax. It was supposed to be a surcharge on the wealthy. But having lots of people paying zero tax breaks the self-checking of the system. So make the bottom bracket wide and flat, and use a prebate (aka citizen dividend) to avoid overtaxing the bottom classes.
Employers should not have to determine their employee's tax brackets. Just withhold 10% for everyone. Let the IRS send a bill to those in higher brackets. If my electric company can send a monthly bill, so can the IRS.
(Last I checked, employers have to calculate EIGHT different taxes for every employee. This is ridiculous.)
I wouldn't make it a "tax deduction", my thought was more along the lines of self-reporting to the welfare agency. I have the (fortunate?) experience of having been all over the bloody map when it comes to economics. I've held six figure jobs, and I've been on SNAP. Sometimes in the same year. When I had my severe midlife crisis and left computer jocking to drive tractor trailers, I had to report to the SNAP and Medicare folks how much I was making when my income changed. This was done through a web interface. It doesn't seem like an unreasonable burden to me.
When you bring in a flat tax... I haven't done the numbers, it may well be a simplification to do a UBI. Though that presumes that everyone *has* an employer, or I have possibly misunderstood your logistics chain.
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As far as harder drugs, having been an EMT in a state with a significant opiate issue, I don;t think most people want fentanyl at all. Fentanyl is an artefact of the drug war and it simply being easier to smuggle in something that's 100 (fentanyl) or 1000 (carfentanil) times stronger than basic heroin, and then the cutting process being done by retards.
If we just straight up legalized heroin, nobody would *ever* touch fentanyl. Heroin addicts are actually remarkably good at moderating their own doses when they have a well regulated (in the original 2A sense) supply. For the most part, they don;t want to die, and know how much to take to not kill themselves. The "opiate crisis" is entirely self-inflicted.
We have a zero income tax bracket now: it's whatever falls below the standard deduction. For an employer to deduct properly, an employer needs to know how much total income you are likely to make including income from other jobs, and spousal income. Employers also have to calculate employer/employee portions of FICA and Medicare. Employers also have to compute state income tax, federal unemployment insurance, and state unemployment insurance.
For a big corporation this can be sunk overhead cost. For a tiny part time startup, this is a really BIG DEAL. Back in my Libertarian days, I tried creating economies of scale for slogan oriented T shirts, bumper stickers and the like. Compliance was the biggest cost of the business by far. Employing someone else to do part of the work was more work than doing it all myself.
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As for fentanyl, you may be correct. But if the voters don't buy it, correct isn't good enough. Back in 1999 I had this fight with the leadership of the Libertarian Party over "Legalize Hemp" vs. "Legalize Drugs." I "won" the argument by footing the bill myself for print runs of Legalize Hemp bumper stickers and yard signs.
Today, Sean Hannity is pushing hemp products. I feel a Nana nana naa naa coming on every time he does so. (Rob Kampia of the Marijuana Policy Project deserves at least two orders of magnitude more credit than me, of course. This doesn't stop me from wanting to neener dance, however.)
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Going forward, I'd push for legalizing poppies and coca leaves. If someone is hardcore enough to concentrate poppy gum into heroin or coca leaves into cocaine, let them do so as long as they can handle their high. Neglect your kids or poop on the sidewalk, however, and it's off to the brutalist architecture government run cold turkey rehab clinic.
This is a program I believe I can sell to the Right today. America survived cocaine in Coca Cola, and some of the Founding Fathers were doing opium laced liquor while writing the Constitution.
I suspect we are in very close accord and fencing over trivialities. :D I'm not particularly attached to any particular solution, I just want to do something that actually works. Without being *excessively* authoritarian, being of a libertarian bent myself.
I understand that we have a zero income tax bracket now, my point is more that once a person has qualified for welfare, if they get a job, the *job* shouldn't have to figure out their issues, (though I see your point when it comes to the W-4) but rather the welfare agency should be seeing how much they are making and adjust their benefits accordingly. But I'm also perfectly comfortable with abolishing the income tax entirely, and feeding the feds via excise tax or other similar means. Most internally consistently via fees for services provided.
I will grant that philosophically I find both property and income taxes offensive. I should be allowed to both own things and perform labor for others without paying rent on the activity.
(Edit: Spelling)
The excessive arguing over trivialities is a major factor in why I gave up on libertarianism a dozen years ago. I've rebranded myself as a reactionary. These days I just want the America I was promised as a kid, with a few tweaks thrown in due to lessons learned in the interim. And most of my focus is on how to get there.
If you have time, would you mind elaborating on your opposition to UBI? I'm debating pro and wd. like to hear some con ideas.
I used to be a huge UBI person until 2020 and rereading Hoffer True Believer. Now I think UBI is a recipe for violent revolution, because it creates a caste of comfortable bored poor.
“a recipe for violent revolution, because it creates a caste of comfortable bored poor.”
Might we not also say this about Substack?
I can see that, but I'd say that depends on the size of it and how incentivizing it is to work.
I know you weren't asking me, but I'll throw in a thought: UBI implies an income you can live on. Having the government fund lazy hippies is annoying.
This is why I use Citizen Dividend. There are lots of people who get dividends who still go to work. I'm shooting for Citizen Dividend + Market Minimum Wage = Living Wage. And by living, I mean enough to frugally support a family and pay for normal medical and legal expenses. Special government aid or charity should be for special situations.
yes, consideration of the behaviours that get incentivized should always be considered when looking at ongoing social benefits.
Thanks. It's a definition issue; I think a UBI can be any amount, and thought maybe the wording was changed to uncouple it from Andrew Yang. Just having something to count on and the ability to work part-time would be good. Unpaid emotional labor is real!
It's a combination of what's probably basic old school protestant work ethic and some notion that the math doesn't work out in the end. Though frankly, it might if we got rid of the Fed and the stupid fiat currency and the inflation effects. Still, I think subsidizing sloth is probably overall a poor idea.
I dunno. I have been *in the dirt* at times. It is currently still less than 30 days since I stopped being homeless. But I still think that it is best to encourage people to be in some way productive. At least until we get to a point where we hit true post-scarcity. But that's basically AI style singularity, so who can say what happens then or if the species even survives it.
So I guess the short answer is "I think the social incentives and mathematics don't work out". I am open to being convinced otherwise, but I have seen a lot of arguments both for and against and I am still on the "against" side. I know that's not a very concrete of an explanation for my position.
A lot of it is probably personal sense of not being particularly happy *myself* when I'm being supported and not supporting myself. So I recognize that this is very much an "anecdote and not data" position, in some ways. I am simply a happier person when I pay my own rent and buy my own food. I feel more accomplished and more successful at being an adult human.
Thanks, that's actually helpful. Some years ago there was a focus group on this of truck drivers, back when they thought autonomous trucks would replace them, and they said the same thing. They didn't want something for nothing. One remedy that was proposed was National Service. But $500 a month might get someone through until they find a new job, or enable them to get training. Or it might be enough to keep a couple together.
Funnily enough, I'm both a truck driver and a computer jock, so I have a fair bit of knowledge about the autonomous vehicle thing. I even applied for a position with a company that's working locally on the issue, though they decided not to hire me for whatever reason. I guess they must have found some *other* truck driving linux sysadmin in town... ;)
I agree that $500 a month might get someone through, but I don't think it makes sense to provide it when it's not needed. I guess that's the distinction I make between "regular" welfare and UBI, particularly the difference between "unemployment" and UBI. I've been on unemployment before. I think the emphasis that unemployment places on finding another job is valuable. I do also realize that it's got some holes in it, for people who are trying to get started from an even lower position.
I certainly understand that people's lives stumble sometimes, and sometimes you end up flat on your face and need some help standing back up again. But (again, this is now fully personal opinion) you have to actually be trying to stand back up. On the flip side, I also grasp that's getting more and more difficult. Wages versus GDP used to track pretty closely, but it's been basically flat since 1970. I can't say for *certain* that's because Nixon fully took us off the gold standard, although it's certainly a theory I like for that.
So that's sort of another point against a UBI, it'd make inflation worse. When government expenditures are decoupled from actual production, especially with a fiat currency that's just being pulled out of the Fed's ass to make the payments, the value of the currency is going to fall.
Seems to me the best way to destroy the drug trade is to remove the demand for escape through drugs, rather than restrict the supply, which increases prices, incentivizing people to produce in the black market.