Guaranteed Minimum Income

The United States should begin conversion of the existing welfare structure into a guaranteed minimum income. I affirm. The resolution is beneficial to society as both policy and principle. I. Policy The status quo is not working. CATO explains that when the expenditures of the federal government is combined with the efforts of state and local governments, nearly 1 trillion (952 Billion) is spent each year on efforts to fight poverty[1]. Despite this, the Census Bureau estimated 45.3 million Americans living in poverty in 2013[2]. According to the Congressional Research Service, there are 24,492,000 households in the bottom quintile of income distribution[3], meaning that foreveryhousehold in the bottom quintile of income distribution, around $39,000 is spent on poverty alleviation efforts. Given that the statistically average household contains 2.54 people[4], this amounts to around $15,354 spent per person in the bottom quintile of income distribution for means-based policies specifically designed to alleviate policy, without factoring in Social Security and Medicare--literally the two largest components of the federal budget other than defense. And yet, we still have 45.3 million people in poverty. This should not be mathematically possible. Indeed, the disparate state of anti-poverty programs in the United States combined with bizarre policies leads to massive inefficiency and abuse, with many citizens not even being aware of the benefits offered to them. The US welfare system is so broken that a single mother is better off working a $29,000 a year job than a $69,000 a year job when government aid is factored in, according to Pennsylvania's secretary of public welfare Gary Alexander[5]. Poorly constructed phase-out policies cause the poor to often face higher de facto marginal tax rates than the wealthy. When government assistance is factored in, over 20% of low to moderate income tax payers face tax rates of over 40%, according the the Congressional Budget Office[6], with 37% of these tax payers facing down rates of 30-39%. Fraud and error abounds: The Federal government made $98 billion in improper payments in 2009, according to CNN[7] with the vast majority of these improper payments going towards welfare system subsidies to individuals who are ineligible. $98 billion might seem like a drop in the bucket compared to the total US budget, but that's enough to send a check for over $2100 to each of the 45.3 million people living in poverty in this country. Because there are so many different welfare programs, administrative (read: bureaucracy) costs account for about a quarter of all welfare spending in the United States according to Daily Kos[8]. This alone is sufficient cause to affirm the resolution: it's inconceivable that the administrative costs for a single agency that sends checks to people in lieu of having hundreds of different policies would have overhead costs in the range of 25% of all costs. I'm getting our citizens 25% more in benefits without cutting it anywhere else just by simply sending them a check and letting them decide what to do with the money. Suffice to say the welfare system in the United States is broken. Governments spend about $15,000 per individual in the bottom income quintile, without factoring in Social Security and Medicare. That's a nice, even number. How much would it cost to guarantee a minimum income of $15,000 per adult? If we implement a sliding scale policy where $15,000 is allocated to each adult and for every dollar in income that individual makes, 20 cents of the $15,000 is lost, about 1.248 trillion a year. Since the poverty line in the United States is $15,930 for a household of 2[9], poverty would essentially be abolished. The United States can easily implement a policy like this, and it should. Anti-poverty spending is already around a trillion, corporate welfare in the United States is enormous ($63 billion in handouts to the Fortune 500 companies alone[10]) and would swiftly be eliminated if the public demanded it, and most importantly after adjustments are made to exclude individuals with a high net worth who just aren't working working, the cost of the minimum income policy would significantly decrease. The point is, the money can be found, and this is *without touching* Social Security or Medicare. Social Security alone costs $814 billion a year[11], and Social Security benefits could slowly be integrated into a minimum income policy very easily. The money can be found. Worst case scenario, changing the income guarantee from $15,000 to $13,000 would keep the total cost under 1 trillion and would almost certainly benefit our poor far more than the status quo which already spends the same amount. II. Principle The resolution ought to be affirmed on principle for a multitude of reasons. First, we need to look at the changing face of the labor market. As technology progresses ever forward, there becomes a larger and larger IQ/Education cut off for who can be economically productive. The Bell Curve explains how this process is already occurring, with the increasing cognitive segregation of the American workforce[12].The days where any American could reasonably expect to get a decent job if they were willing to work hard is but a memory now, and it's only going to get worse. Business Insider[13] reports that 47% of American jobs are at a high risk of becoming automized within two decades. Humanity has dealt with sudden bursts of technology changing the way the labor force functioned before, but this time is truly different because as technology increases exponentially, soon the only jobs humans will be able to perform are those that the machine is unable to do. Moores Law tells us that computing power doubles every 18 months. It won't be very long at all until the machine overtakes us all, and it's in everyone's self interest to establish an economy where those unable to get jobs because their skills are obsolete are taken care of--before your skills become obsolete. Even if my opponent proves that new jobs will be created eventually due to increased productivity which he won't because this time is different from the past, he still loses because the history of the Industrial Revolution is marred with a century long period of misery and exploitation of all those who didn't benefit from it. A minimum income serves as a safety net to keep this from happening to those who's livelihoods are destroyed by the technological revolution.Secondly, the moral element. Slate Star Codex[14] makes a compelling argument that we should view a minimum income through the lens of eminent domain. As we know, since employment increasingly requires more intelligence and education as technology progresses, more and more people get left behind. Modernity has taken hundreds of thousands of people who could've lived happy, productive, and fulfilling lives as farmers or craftsmen, and created a society where productivity requires skills these people simply do not have. Advances in technology have benefited everyone by making things thousands of times more productive, but has left behind people who couldn't participate. Thus: "Think of it as the ultimate use of eminent domain; a power beyond your control has seized everything in the world, it had some good economic reasons for doing so, but it at least owes you compensation!" Again, it's in our self interest to establish this principle before we too are left behind.Thirdly, freedom. With a minimum income, citizens are free to spend their money on whatever they please instead of having their choices dictated by the whim of the state. We should prefer a system that allows for the maximum number of people to act according to their own interests. The resolution is affirmed. Appendix: Here's how I got the numbers I did. A few assumptions were involved. The Congressional Research Service published a report detailing income brackets in the US and how many households were in each bracket[15]. Taking an assumed average in the center of each bracket (so the assumed average in the 35-40 thousand bracket was 37.5 thousand), I calculated how much of the income subsidy each bracket would get if they lost 20 cents of the subsidy for each dollar of income they made. I then calculated the cost of the policy per household and from that number and derived the cost per adult by estimating the number of adults per household if the average household is 2.54 individuals and adults make up approximately 75.4% of the population[16]. The result was a cost of $1.248 trillion. Not a perfect calculation by any means, but effective enough for an estimation. An actual policy would likely be more complex and phase out the income guarantee at a progressive rate based on how much income is made, rather than a flat one, costing even less. Sources: 1.http://www.cato.org... 2.http://www.census.gov... 3.https://fas.org... 4.http://www.statista.com... 5.http://www.aei.org... 6.http://www.cbo.gov... 7.http://money.cnn.com... 8. http://www.dailykos.com... 9.http://aspe.hhs.gov... 10. http://www.forbes.com... 11. http://www.cbpp.org...12. Herrnstein, Richard J., and Charles A. Murray. The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life.13. http://www.businessinsider.com...14. http://slatestarcodex.com...15. See 3 16. http://www.census.gov...