Follow the link below to read about a plan to:
1. Eliminate poverty in America
2. Provide affordable health care for every American
3. Dismantle the welfare bureaucracy
4. Curb the influence of lobbyists
5. And balance the federal budget
http://www.radicalmiddle.com/x_murray.htm
I will never click your link.
It's just another income redisribution scheme. Taxpayers still have to pay for it.
Radical Middle must be what liberals have started calling themselves since "progressive" wore out its welcome.
To Anonymous 2 - Charles Murray, to my knowledge, has never been called a liberal before. The book to which the link makes reference to is published by the American Enterprise Institute - I'm sure it might be considered liberal by a few survivalists in Montana, but is generally referred to as a conservative think tank.
To Anonymous 1 - Live a little. Click the link.
Murray's plan is one of the most interesting proposals I have come across. To wait around for the political establishment to come up with any new ideas is to vote for the status quo. The government is currently in a state of paralysis - the problems so enormous, the corruption so pervasive, that it is reduced to debating the purely symbolic.
If a third party candidate is to gain any traction he/she had better have a good issue and a fresh approach. Charles Murray's Plan offers that.
Charles Murray is a resident scholar with the American Enterprise Institute and the author of a number of books on public policy including “Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980”, “Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life” and most recently “In Our Hands: A Plan To Replace The Welfare State”.
In the latter book Murray outlines an extraordinary plan to end poverty, dismantle the welfare state, provide universal health care, and incidentally lower the federal budget and reduce the national debt.
How does his plan do this?
First by giving a $10,000 yearly cash grant to every citizen of the United States over the age of 21 and not currently incarcerated. Of this grant $3,000 a year is obligated to the purchase of health insurance. The rest of the money is ours to do with as we like. We would also offer a plan, for another $2,000 a year, to begin a retirement savings account. Saving at this rate in 45 years, at age 65 your 21-year-old investor, would, at a 4% annual interest rate, possess $250,000 as a retirement nest egg, in addition to his annual payment.
In return for this we abolish the welfare state: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, agricultural and corporate subsidies, every transfer payment (which Murray defines as a payment some get and others do not). Currently these transfer payments amount to some $1,500,000,000,000 a year and are growing. Current estimates are the Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will grow from 9% of GDP now to 28% by the year 2024.
The initial cost of this grant will be about $350 billion dollars a year over current expenditures, but will reach a crossover point within five years and by 2024 would produce a savings of some $500 billion a year.
Try not to think about this or that objection for a moment. There are several I can think of and I’m sure there are more you will probably think off. Think instead of what this could accomplish. To quote Murray “What matters is not just that a lone individual has $10,000 a year, but that everyone has $10,000 a year and everyone knows that everyone else has that resource. Strategies that are not open to an individual are open to a couple; strategies that are not open to a couple are open to an extended family or, for that matter, to half a dozen friends who pool resources; strategies not open to a small group are open to a neighborhood.”
Can’t afford to go to college or a technical or trade school? Now you can. Need a reliable car to get to that better paying job in the suburbs? Now you can afford one. Tired or your run down, crime-ridden neighborhood? Now you have the money to do something about it. Want to open a neighborhood business? You and your relatives or friends have the resources to do it. Want to buy a house? Here’s the down payment and the money to maintain it. Worried about getting sick. You don’t have to anymore. You and all of your neighbors and all of your friends and all of your relatives have affordable health care. Wish your church had more resources to put into its outreach programs? Here’s the money.
Are you a liberal? You’ve just eliminated poverty, provided universal health care, and put a safety net under everyone.
Are you a conservative? You’ve just eliminated the welfare bureaucracy, something most of you despaired of ever doing. You have put people in charge of their own lives and provided them the resources to make it work.
In addition to legions of bureaucrats you’ve also put a lot of lobbyists out of work. No more quid pro quo.
If you are interested in finding out more, here are some links you might find useful.
Book Span In Depth
Three hour interview with Charles Murray
http://www.booktv.org/indepth/index.asp?segid=5375&schedID=331
From The American Enterprise Institute
A Plan to Replace the Welfare State
Excerpts from a book forum with Charles Murray, Cristopher DeMuth and Jonathan Rauch
http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.24231/pub_detail.asp
The $10,000 Solution
http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.24203/pub_detail.asp
The Plan to Replace the Welfare State
http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.24127/pub_detail.asp
From Wikipedia
A short biography of Charles Murray
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Murray_(author)
From The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics
Murray credits Milton Friedman’s idea of a negative income tax as the genesis for his proposal
The Negative Income Tax
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/NegativeIncomeTax.html
From Amazon.com
In Our Hands : A Plan To Replace The Welfare State
By Charles Murray
Hardcover: 140 pages
Publisher: AEI Press (March 25, 2024)
Language: English
ISBN: 0844742236
Price $13.00
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0844742236/qid=1153337710/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/102-2830158-0681747?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
Here are some simple figures (in 2024 dollars):
Since 1966 the federal budget has tripled, increasing by some $50 billion each year.
Since 1971 (I used the later year because Medicare was just picking up steam) the amount spent for Medicare has increased 1000%.
Since 1971 federal expenditures for other health services have increased 800%.
Increases in health costs are averaging about 25% of the total budget increase.
And now the baby boomers are now getting set to retire.
Through good times and bad, through conservative presidents and liberal ones, through liberal congresses and conservative ones, the federal budget has grown and grown and grown. As Senator William Proxmire used to say, “A billion dollars here and a billion dollars there and the next thing you know you are talking about some real money.”
Is it any wonder that lobbyists make their pilgrimage to Washington much as Moslems do to Mecca, although with considerably less worthy motives in mind. The federal government is now a $2.5 trillion lottery. $100 million is pocket change, the $10,000 William Jefferson had in his freezer is an insulting tip.
I have seen a tendency among many of the people who post on this site, myself included, to suggest a tweak here and a tweak over there as a way of bringing the problem under control. Conservatives for a quarter century have tried to starve the beast, and it grows ever bigger. All of us call for honest politicians, but who among us would actually be that honest when faced with this mountain of money. I think the time has come to understand that only a drastic break with the habits and practices institutionalized since the advent of the New Deal will have any effect on this gathering disaster.
I think Charles Murry’s Plan is just that sort of dramatic break with the past. His plan will give enough money back to the people that they will be able to plan their own futures. Few of us think of $10,000 a year as an insignificant sum of money, and I suspect relatively few of us would squander the opportunity that it would provide.
As health consumers we would know there are limits – something the government cannot bring itself to acknowledge.
Think of the creative and useful things that we could do with that money, think of the range of choices we could bring to the table.
Having learned we can’t starve the beast, we could instead begin to dismantle it.
Bob, out of respect to you I will give you my rebuttal on all 5 of your points and why I voted thumbs down on you posting.
Your posting got a thumb’s down for two reasons. The first is your five ideas will not fix everything. Second your post is about masking symptoms not fixing problems.
1 Poverty is man made. The only poverty left in America is those that make it for them selves. I work in an area of Los Angeles where people live in house I wouldn’t let my dog go into. But the satellite dishes are bolted to the sides of the house and the BMW’s and Escalades with their 28” chrome rims are in the driveway.
2 Affordable health care is a euphemism for “universal health care”. This country is a capitalistic country and universal health care, affordable or otherwise will never work here. NEVER!
3 “Dismantle the welfare bureaucracy”. Wow can you clock that one any darker Bob? Again this is a country built on freedom and freedom in the market place equals capitalism. What you are advocating is “bring down big business, the evil corporation.” That will not work either my friend. Let’s just do away with corporate taxes. The products and services they sell have the corporate tax built right in. The cost of corporate taxes is passed right to you and me anyway.
Oh I misunderstood. Did you mean you want to do away with the bureaucratic road blocks for welfare? If so I refer back to 1, 2 and 3.
4 No, do away with lobbyist.
5 The federal budget is balanced. You can’t use the accounting of your own household budget as a model for the federal budget. That is media trick to get you polarized.
Let me give you an example. The larges corporation in the world-bar none is General Motors. It employees some 1.3 million people throughout the world and has a GDP of 176.5 billion dollars a year. Do you or anyone else reading this thread think, your household budget and taxes are even remotely similar to General Motors? If not, than why would you compare you household budget and taxes to the United States of America? (The population of the United States is estimated at 299 million with a GDP of 8.7 trillion dollars a year.)
Household accounting is different from corporate accounting which is different that governmental accounting. We are talking about the accounting of apples, oranges and beef.
I am poor and since both democratic liberals and conservative republicans can't solve poverty with either government spending or tax incentives then the poor are poor by choice WTF. I am one of the poor my fathers pay was maybe 10 grand in the late 70's when he got cancer what limited savings he had he had to use to keep his family going because the government doesn't consider you disabled until your out a year and not dead.
I got a degree from a private college with a good reputation. yet I have never owned a luxury vehicle let alone a BMW, and I have lived in those houses and I did breifly have cable it got to over 25 a month I cancelled it.
here are my rebuttlas consider the above to be the first and to add to that A do you know that is the persons car maybe the rich relative is helping someone out. and don't judge a book by its cover I mean maybe keeping the house ugly keeps the taxes down and everyone knows what a murder taxes are in Cali.
Second point 2)as for affordable health care or univesal the whole system currently rations it is that better and if enough people lose their ability to afford healthcare no matter how entrenched the system is. as for three 3 we do live in a capitolist system but I sense with your comments that you are a rascist so I will not debate number 3
finally GM employs directly about 580,000 thousand people worldwide and has a market cap of about 20.8 billion and owes about 104 billion in future obligations I know I have an accounting degree and it was in their annual report. Toyota has a market cap of about 178 billion and their government has nationalized health care that no one complains about. As for employing people walmart employes 144 million aroudn the world and the US economy is about 12 to 20 trillion depending on what money supply number you use. And to you I leave this which you won't believe the average person on welfare is WHITE, MARRIED, LIIVING IN THE RURAL SOUTH, AND OVER 65
http://home.att.net/~Resurgence/7Welfare.htm
that is my two cents.
Eks you have an accounting degree in california and can't make a living?
Not having cable TV oh my GOD! We need emergency legislation to take money from someone so your basic human rights can be restored!
With all respect and no sarcasm Esk, I am shocked that you have an economics degree.
I truly have not a clue as to the point of your rebuttal.
As for you last statement, yes I do know that there are more whites on welfare that other minorities. It also dose not surprise me that they are in the South and retired. I also know there are more whites in prison than there are minorities. And you point was…?
Eks and Accounting Degree
I thought I made it clear in one of my posts that this plan is designed (by an avowed libertarian who works for a conservative think tank) to be less expensive than the system we already have in place. We can argue about the numbers and if it turns out they are mistaken then back to the drawing board. I don’t see, however, how this expands the welfare state. The purpose is precisely the opposite, to get the government out of the welfare and the health business at the same time and for the same reason – it has shown no demonstrable competence for either.
I’ve noticed two interesting thing about the responses to this proposal. The first is no one has questioned any of the numbers. The second is that no one has offered any counter proposals.
Charles Murray suggests that one way to approach his proposal is as a thought experiment. That’s all I am really asking people to do, think about it. So far no one has taken the time to refute a single point. That isn’t debate, it’s merely opinions colliding in cyberspace.
sorry, but you imply my being poor is a function of my lifestyle. and I will admit maybe 1 to 5 percent of the poor are living that life by choice. I am not living a high life with a junky house and a nice new car. I had to sell my car to pay my rent which becuase I had a $50 dollar treasury bond disqualified for any assistance. I have went to school twice Once to get my accounting degree and now to ad a logistics degree as my accounting position was outsourced. My point is you state enfactly that that ALL the poor are Poor by choice and select something you see without investigating its truth for all you know that MIGHT have been a drug dealers house. I as a matter of fact do now live in the south I live in the Midwest and I am not incarcerated for the unenlightened that means I am not in prison. and as for the cable tv comment when it got above what I was willing to pay for it I dropped it no fuss no hassle I made a CHOICE in that case. Being poor the rest of my life was not the game plan but it is where I am now. I hope this sets the record straight, as for the rascist comment I am sorry I have seen so much of it in the US I start seeing it everywhere. BTW I am a white Non Traditional Sturdent who is approaching 40.
Is this what a debate looks like?
Bob Gill on July 23, 2024 - 4:27pm
I would have commented, but your numbers are off by a digit. Giving $10,000 to each of 300 million is 3.5 trillion .. not $350 billion.
If you read a bit more carefully you might notice that the $350 billion is not the total amount, it is the amount over current expenditures.
RE: Jim D
Bob Gill on July 24, 2024 - 7:50pm
You are correct. I apoligize.
How do you suggest an issue? I mean how do you start a new thread?
lil cup. Go to the shoutbox menu, pick a topic, you can add a issue under general topics, If you can't find something that your issur falls under, go to suggest an issue. Good luck.