oops double post delete plz

its even worse than that. they shift wealth from poor ppl upward as well.

You're telling that to someone who had a payday loan at one (very low) point in his early 20's. You do not want to know the **** I had to eat to get to where I am now. This gave me a healthy appreciation for how awful it is to work really hard for something and have someone else take it from you and waste it.

Thing is government spending doesn't actually have to be waste. I have business partners and an employee who collectively keep 55 cents of every dollar I bring in. I don't bear them any ill will because they work hard to earn the money they get and it's their share. I'm super happy with my cut and it keeps me very comfortable.

If government spending was mostly going into investments that produced a positive ROI for society I'd be a lot cooler about it. But in reality a lot of it is going to pay for massive medical interventions for ****ty baby boomers so that they can add 6 extremely painful months to their lifespan, blowing/locking up brown people, and making sure that all the really great businesses have 50M a year worth of regulatory compliance costs to operate in so that the people who are already in those businesses don't have to deal with interlopers who aren't already rich.

This truly is a post-modern masterpiece. My hat's off to you, good sir.

lol at the journey of trickle down economics in the post Reagan age. Gone from voodoo economics to being something so obvious to some people that it's conceptually impossible that no one has ever or ever will think differently.

I love when I get to use the same meme twice in a 24 hr period...

What if we take turns watching the YouTube in 30second intervals and compile notes?

You go first?

For some people a check would completely replace the services they get. For some people it would be better. But some people would still be on the street, eating from trash cans, or at home with no food and kids to feed. For some of them it would be bad luck. For some laziness. For some drugs. For some mental illness.

What's the point of limiting aid to only money if it's not to just make sure that some are blamed and suffer. It's childish imo. Restating the first paragraph here, but sure money may be what some people need, give them more freedom and help them improve their lives, but it's not automatically true for everyone. If you want to help people, give them what you think they need sure, but then check back and see how it's working. Don't just say "you got your money, if you spent it you can starve, and I can have a clean conscience.".

And the problems with Friedman are that he's an absolutist and that results in being simplistic. Optimal solutions to complex problems are usually a mix of approaches. Also, his absolutism is the kind of thing that leads to the authoritarianism is supposedly his mission to oppose.

I watched the video, here's a paraphrased pseudo-transcript:

Buckley: isn't it true that positive government action is a mistake which tends to exacerbate situations it intends to cure, won't your proposal of a NIT increase in the number of indolent/unemployed persons than existing or ideal programs?

Friedman:
- the proposal is to help poor people by giving them money, which is what they need (rather than bureaucracy and paternalistic oversight under existing programs)
- Treat poor like rich in terms of bureaucracy by using the tax system
- Explains idea of NIT using example of family of 4.
--- Set a threshold income, say $3k for family of 4
--- If a family earns $4k then they have $1k taxable income
--- If they earn $2k then they have a negative taxable income of -$1k
--- Apply a "tax rate" to the negative taxable income, say 50%. Result: Pay $500 to family

Friedman: This is different from programs which set a minimum floor income, and say "if you make less than X we'll make up the difference."
- Claims that type of program destroys the incentive to work
- Claims the 50% (or other) discount rate under his plan also has disincentive effect but it's less

Buckley: aren't there other ways to do the same thing as you are proposing: i.e. just reduce taxability of welfare benefits?

Friedman: You could do that, but now being on program is advantageous in a way that NIT is not, so people who get on welfare programs will have an advantage when they get a job, thus incentivizing people to get on welfare programs and sta on them. [His argument here would seem to go against the idea that he could combine NIT + other social safety net programs]

Friedman: Virtue of NIT is that everyone is treated the same way

Buckley:
- Shouldn't we distinguish between the deserving and undeserving poor (the "disorganized" poor)
- Should the undeserving poor get to spend all of that NIT money on bad choices and be broke on Jan 2? Then what?

Friedman:
- NIT would be applied analogously to W-2 deductions, so instead of getting a lump sum you get extra on each paycheck, just like you have some deducted from each paycheck now
- For people with no job you could pay out in incremental payments
- Problem no worse than under existing programs
- Better to just give money; more efficient than other programs

Buckley: but shouldn't we treat lazy people paternalistically, i.e. shouldn't someone be checking in to see if they spend the money on the 4 kids?

Friedman:
- The problem is we don't actually provide sufficient assistance, either in terms of income or paternalistic help
- Welfare workers are more police than actual helpers
- Giving the poor money will have a more positive effect than paternalistic oversight
- Having government help people meet basic financial needs frees up private charity to take role of providing more individualized paternalistic help, and charity is better at this role and worse at providing income assistance, whereas it's the other way around for government [I think this is an interesting and potentially strong argument]

Buckley: As a political matter, isn't it likely the plan would reduce private charity?
Friedman:
- The question is which alternative welfare strategy is worse in this regard?
- Claims it's hard to get off welfare because of disincentive to increase income [I'm fairly sure in modern times the average family/individual is on welfare programs only for short periods of time. Not sure if it was the same then, but Friedman's argument is wrong with regard to modern welfare in the US AFAIK]
- Claims his program does not have this effect [assuming NIT only and no other social welfare programs?]

I didn't know it was the Buckley interview. No one should watch that cretin.

tl;dr

This thread takes me back to the time a friend suggested a Rothbard video. Couldn't remember the exact video anymore though, so I just watched his one act play and then read his take-down of Friedman's RIT Another advantage of welfare over a guaranteed income is the stigma of welfare that discourages many people (Chinese Americans, Albanians. Mormons, for example) from using it. Maybe this reverse income tax ins't such a great idea after all. I mean, who am I to argue with someone of Rathbard's stature?

giving money to poor people is the "gas pedal" of the economy. socialists want to "prime the pump" so to speak, and responsibly use that gas pedal to improve society at large. libertarians want to strip the car for parts.

5000 poor people spending $200 each clearly creates more economic activity than 1 rich guy deciding to take a trip down to the Bugatti dealership or the art gallery.

Where do you get those wild and crazy ideas from? Are you drunk??

While there are plenty of abuses with capital gains, in the larger scheme of things it’s largely irrelevant. According to the IRS the top 1% had about $500B in capital gains in 2016. So even if we scrapped the capital gains tax, we’d only increase tax revenue by 3-6%.

No it doesn’t. Basically all that will happen with income redistribution is a higher skilled, higher paid Bugatti mechanic will lose his job and Jiffy Lube will be hiring lower skilled, lower paid workers. Like I said, we can’t separate income redistribution from job redistribution—they’re joined at the hip.

Bugatti has like 14 mechanics and Jiffy Lube employs at least 25k people.

You need to work on your fundamentals before you critique posts.

Middle class and to some extent the lower class drive the economy more than the rich. This isn't a controversial opinion by leftists. It's something you learn in lower macro classes.

Fine. Then after the tax hike, Bugatti will have 12 mechanics and Jiffy Lube 25,005 employees. Utopia!

There is no evidence, and I mean absolutely none, that that poster has ever attended a single college economics class or even walked by an economics classroom on his way to the student union.

So you give one rich person $10000 and they spend it all on having their $1M car serviced. Or you give 50 people with beaters $200 and they spend it at Jiffy Lube. Same thing? No. What Asher Edelman said. Velocity of money. The money from Jiffy Lube is spent a dozen times over while the Bugatti owner and then the owner of the Bugatti dealership all visit their financial planners.