Look at this article, and tell me why we can't afford the citizen's dividend:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/oct/18/welfare-spending-jumps-32-percent-four-years/?page=1
If you add up all the welfare programs in America (except the ones that cost less than 100 million, so there's actually more welfare programs than this), you get a grand total of 1.03 trillion dollars. This is money spent on aid to the poor, from food stamps to pell grants to tax credits, including medicaid. This does not include medicare and social security. If we added medicare and social security to the bill, we would get 2.293 trillion dollars. To give $12,000 to every single citizen of the United States, we would require 3.6 trillion dollars. (A citizen's dividend naturally doesn't include illegal immigrants living here illegally.) So spending wise, we are already 64% of the way there just by replacing our previous spending programs. The remaining shortfall, .7 trillion, can be covered by a variety of cheap measures that will quickly get us up to speed:
Interest on the debt is 224 billion dollars a year. Much of this interest is being paid into medicare and social security trust funds. When we scrap those programs, we can scrap interest being paid to them as well. The remaining interest can be dealt with in two different manners -- we could pay down the debt in the first years of our program, until it is gone and we aren't paying any more interest. Or we could default in the debt, and be free to immediately reroute the money to the citizen's dividend. Either way, the money will eventually be freed up and available to sink into the citizen's dividend, so we can subtract this amount from our shortfall, since we are looking at the citizen's dividend as a long-term solution.
.7 - .224 = .476 trillion.
Next up is veteran's benefits. This is where they get free health care and the like for services rendered to the country. That's nice, but the citizen's dividend should be more than fair enough, so we don't need to give them extra funding, just like the citizen's dividend covers people who have paid into social security but now won't be receiving any. Veteran's benefits cost a whopping 130 billion dollars a year.
.476 trillion - .130 trillion = .346 trillion.
We still have a stubborn .346 trillion dollar deficit. So what do we do? It's time to slash the military. Like I said before, China, the second strongest military on Earth, only spends 228 billion dollars on their force. America, even if it needs to be the strongest nation on Earth (which is strange since supposedly we have all of Europe as our contract-obligated allies to come to our aid in case of a war of self-defense), is spending 716.3 billion a year on our military. If we cut 346 billion from that budget, what do we get?
.7163 trillion - .346 trillion = 370.3 billion dollars, or 162% of the Chinese military's budget. That's more than enough to counter any imaginable threat to the United States or her allies.
So there we have it. Without raising taxes, or changing the current tax plan in any way, we could fund the citizen's dividend, without jeopardizing any government program not related to welfare, and without weakening our military in any significant fashion. The question isn't financial. The question is, do we want every American to have a minimum standard of living, or do we want special interests to get special privileges, while leaving the vast majority of Americans left hanging out to dry? Do we want public funds to be spent on the general public, or on tiny minorities, who suck all the rest of us dry? Do we want a nation of makers and takers, where 51% of the electorate votes to partake of 49% of the nation's wealth, or an even distribution for all, so wealth transfers are simply removed from the democratic equation?
Do we want sanity and compassion or bankruptcy and dissolution?
Why does anyone still oppose the citizen's dividend?
3 comments:
How, under your leadership, would you deal with our aging population? Wouldn't a citizen's dividend program, if we embarked on it, also face the long term challenges Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid face?
Also, I have to disagree with you when it comes to Veteran's Affairs. Sure, we could get rid of many of the miscellanous benefits, but people who develop medical conditions as a result of their service, life threatening or otherwise, need to recieve care at a military hospital.
Outside of those two concerns, I think it's quite a neat system. Could it also replace public education? (a portion of a child's dividend could perhaps be permitted to be spent on education, similar to a voucher). All the government would really have to do then is provide defense, law enforcement, infrastructure, and certain types of research and development which the market cannot profitably persue.
Hopefully people will save money for retirement and not rely entirely on the citizen's dividend for end of life health care insurance, which can cost enormous sums. For imprudent people who don't save enough money for their golden years, they'll just have to accept a shorter lifespan. We can't afford the current spending projected for medicare, medicaid, and social security, whether we use the current system or switch to this one.
If people live healthy, eat right, don't drink, don't smoke, etc, they can have a long, disease free life without spending a dime. We should focus more on instilling good habits into people and less on the expensive hospital care.
Genuinely injured veterans as a result of war injuries do deserve free health care, but the vast majority of veteran's benefits go to people who were never hurt and just want free health care in their old age. That's an unfair premium taxpayers are being forced to pay.
Would it be possible to adapt this citizen's dividend into a universal healthcare scheme, similar to Singapore's?
In Singapore, all citizens receive a basic catastrophic health insurance plan from the government to cover major medical expenses from things like car accidents and cancer, and are required to set aside a certain portion of their wages to an individual medical savings account to pay for routine care.
Perhaps a portion of the citizen's dividend can be set aside for medical savings, and a catastrophic insurance be provided to all citizens as a true replacement for Medicare, in the same way that the citizen's dividend is a true replacement for social security and all of the assorted welfare programs we currently have.
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