Guaranteed Monthly Income: Boon or Bane?

From American Thinker.com (Oct. 14):

Andrew Yang's Bad Idea

Andrew Yang's socialist idea of a guaranteed minimum income, if enacted, could only prove to be a bane.  The idea may enjoy limited success among some entrepreneurial types, but when it comes to the entire American people, the great likelihood is that replacing $1,000 of income per month for all workers would sway many to reduce work.  Others may even experience a "failure to launch" their own entrepreneurism, encouraged by unearned payouts.  If a guaranteed minimum income were enacted as a welfare entitlement, the result would be that the wealth generation taxed by the government would see an overall drop, while welfare spending would rise.  Any tax increase to recover losses in revenue would only incentivize people to work even less.  This would mean fewer people working, since whatever is taxed decreases in frequency, including work.  With costs up, revenues down, and incentives to work less, a guaranteed monthly income entitlement would become unsustainable.

Would People Be Harmed?

Human economic activity grows from mankind's ecological imperative to address survival needs by seeking to reduce material scarcity and increase physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being.  But, as Thomas Sowell points out, "future wealth is less likely to be produced when people see that it is going to be confiscated."  How many potential Thomas Edisons and Alexander Graham Bells, being awarded unearned income, might refrain from working the hours necessary to invent new things?  Imagine a world where Edison and Bell themselves had worked less, while socialist programs bestowed "free" money on would-be inventors for not working.

Nothing is really "free"; everything has a cost.  The cost of socialist welfare programs can be seen in the increase of physical misery and premature death they bring about.  With less responsibility toward work, people exercise less responsibility toward their fellow human beings.  Without responsibility, freedom gives way to dependency.  When people work more, they bless their communities by their labors and create more freedom for themselves and for those relieved from the financial burden of having to support them.  When people work less, they benefit society less, often themselves becoming dependent on others. [read more]

Yea, guaranteed monthly income is a bad idea. Glad Young dropped out of the race.