A Refresher: "The Case for a Guaranteed Minimum Income"

[Marengo]

My favorite reason in favor:

"9. A GMI allows the uniquely American emphasis on "freedom" to be expressed in a way that is profoundly meaningful in our daily lives. Personal liberty is sharply abridged and even made a mockery of when citizens are forced by economic circumstance to spend the majority of their waking lives doing work that is not meaningful to them as individuals. Reporting daily to a degrading job one despises just to keep food on the table and the lights burning is not "freedom" in any meaningful sense, and if we are serious about being a beacon of human liberty, we must make people free in the tangible and immediate ways that really matter each day of their lives."

Article: http://sites.google.com/site/jdquirk/articles/guaranteed-income

[Davis_X_Machina]

1. You might be interested...

...in the work of the Johnson/Nixon-era President's Commission on Income Maintenance Systems.

It's all from so long ago that there's nothing available except dead-tree.

The EITC is a much-morphed offspring of that effort.

Yes, Virginia, there was a time when a Republican president, with bi-partisan support, could support such a commission, created though it was by his Democratic predecessor.

Bipartisanship -- not just a slogan.

[billlll]

2. summary of dollars given under this idea in parts of Europw now?

Seek info.

Holland is one area I think.

[stray cat]

3. How much will you give up in income to pay for your GOP neighbor?

[My Good Babushka]

4. Wouldn't have to pay any more in taxes than we do now

and we could dismantle every poverty program that subsidizes cheap labor for US tightwad companies. No more food stamps or welfare and their attendant fraud and abuses. That frees up a lot of money.

[Marengo]

6. Bingo...That's the beauty of the GMI N/T

[Marengo]

5. Political affiliation is irrelevant

People in need are people in need. Withholding assistance because someone doesn't share your political beliefs is hardly a progressive value.

[Odin2005]

7. K&R

If you are a wage slave you are not free no matter how much the Libertarians insist you are. It is what Marx called something like "merely formal (legal) freedom" rather than freedom in fact.