Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk,
Annie Lowrey, the author of a new book on universal basic income says Trump should "shower people with money".
In a New York Times Op-Ed Annie Lowrey says Trump Should Just Give People Money.
Lowrey claims Trump should "shower people with money, no strings attached".
Lowery makes two blatant lies in her op-ed.
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Universal income is a method backed by extensive research.
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Universal income has a bipartisan pedigree.
Lesson in Scaling
Actually, there is zero research because it has never been tried in scale.
Free money was tried once in Canada. It seemingly "worked" only because everyone in Ontario gave "free" money for the benefit of residents of a single town in the province.
The town did benefit, but next up the scale would have been for everyone in the rest of Canada to give "free" money to everyone living in the province of Ontario.
Once you get to the stage of giving everyone in the country enough free money to abolish poverty, where the heck does the money come from?
Socialist Pedigrees
Lowrey notes that Mark Zuckerberg, Hillary Clinton, the Black Lives Matter movement, Bill Gates and Elon Musk are just a few of the free money policy converts and supporters.
Under such a proposal, Uncle Sam would send every American $500 or $1,000 a month, likely eliminating other stingier and less-effective programs.
Lowrey cites an absurd study from the Journal of Poverty, a socialist organization that supports a negative income tax. Here is the pertinent snip:
A group of prominent welfare economists recently examined such a policy and concluded it could be funded by getting rid of programs including SNAP, T.A.N.F. and the earned-income tax credit. Adding it onto what the government already does would cost something like $200 billion or $300 billion a year, which could be easily financed by repealing the Trump tax cuts and closing loopholes for rich companies and individuals.
Hallelujah!
Wait a second, first, let's do the math.
The US Population is 328 million. Giving everyone $1,000 a month would cost $3.936 trillion.
Read that carefully. Yes, that is close to $4 trillion a year.
Let's assume Lowrey really meant $1,000 a year, not month, although that is not what she said.
SNAP Math
Let's do the SNAP math.
126.75 * 12 = $1521.
Oops. To break even with SNAP we would have to give everyone at least $1521 a year.
And what about Earned Income Credit? Medicaid?
Fancy that, so ensure that no one loses under the program we might have to give everyone $2,000 or $3,000 a year.
At $3,000 per year, the cost would be a "mere" $0.984 Trillion. At $2,000 per...