In Our Hands : A Plan To Replace The Welfare State by Charles Murray (PDF)

Description

America’s population is wealthier than any in history. Every year, the American government redistributes more than a trillion dollars of that wealth to provide for retirement, health care, and the alleviation of poverty. We still have millions of people without comfortable retirements, without adequate health care, and living in poverty. Only a government can spend so much money so ineffectually. The solution is to give the money to the people.This is the Plan, a radical new approach to social policy that defies any partisan label. Murray suggests eliminating all welfare transfer programs at the federal, state, and local levels and substituting an annual $10,000 cash grant to everyone age twenty-one or older. In Our Hands describes the financial feasibility of the Plan and its effects on retirement, health care, poverty, marriage and family, work, neighborhoods and civil society.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: From Publishers Weekly Libertarian Murray’s Losing Ground laid the groundwork for controversial welfare reform proposals. His latest volume continues in the same vein, positing that government support has exacerbated dysfunctional underclass behavior, and offering a compromise to social democrats who call starve-the-beast policies cruel. In “The Plan,” all the money currently used in transfer programs Murray doesn’t deem universal (Social Security, agricultural subsidies, corporate welfare, as opposed to national defense, clean air, etc.) would be redirected into a new program that gives each citizen an annual $10,000 cash grant, beginning at age 21. The plan would slice one Gordian knot: everyone would be required to buy health insurance, insurers would have to treat the entire population as a single pool and changes in tort and licensing laws would enable low-cost clinics for minor problems. But Murray’s purposes are larger: to enable the search for a vocation by making it easier to change jobs; to encourage marriage among low-income people; and to move social welfare support from bureaucracies back to Tocquevillian civil society—a nostalgic argument that deserves a more cyber-era analysis. His volume makes an intriguing contrast to 1999’s left-meets-libertarian book The Stakeholder Society (unmentioned by Murray), which proposed $80,000 grants, financed by taxing the rich. Given Murray’s track record—he coauthored The Bell Curve—and his think tank backing, expect much discussion of this book in print and on air. (Mar.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist Murray has ardently advocated scrapping the welfare state since well before his best-seller Losing Ground (1984) cogently argued that welfare harms recipients. He has been criticized most for not proposing something to replace welfare. Now he does. Give $10,000 (to begin with) per year, tax free, to every adult over 21, with the stipulation that $3,000 of it be spent on health insurance and the strong recommendation that $2,000 be invested toward retirement income. Once an individual’s earned income reaches $25,000, surtax on the grant begins, and those making $50,000 and more would pay back half the grant. The grant plan is accompanied by not that many legal changes, and they’re worth doing, anyway (e.g., creating a single pool of the insured for health insurance, greatly compressing rate differentials). After a first few expensive years, the plan would develop much less expensively than the present welfare system. Gone would be Social Security, Medicare, and the rest, and everyone would have at least $5,000 annual discretionary income. Sweet? As lucidly argued by Murray, seems practical, too. Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Review [Charles Murray] has done more to provoke serious debate on subjects ranging from welfare to IQ than any of the million or so members of American academe, and more to produce changes in America’s welfare state than any of the army of professional politicians., The Economist About the Author Charles Murray is the W. H. Brady Scholar in Culture and Freedom at the American Enterprise Institute. His previous books include Losing Ground (1984), In Pursuit (1988), The Bell Curve (1994, with Richard J. Herrnstein), What It Means to Be a Libertarian (1997), and Human Accomplishment (2003). Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Murray, a libertarian, says the government should do what the government does best — write checks! He proposes the government should supply a stipend for every adult. This starts at 10,000, plus 3,000 dedicated to health insurance, no strings attached. This amount, he proposes, would constitute a living (if meager) income for everyone. The stipend gradually reduces to nil once the total income of an individual reaches $60,000. In exchange, all government programs should be eliminated, including social security, medicare, and medicaid.He maintains that this plan will change major dynamics of our society. For example, it will minimize government influence to achieve soi-disant desirable ends through the power of the purse. It will, he maintains, incentivize individuals to make responsible decisions. For instance, it will encourage people to form stable relationships, because two can live better on $20,000 per year than one on $10,000. He says this no-strings-attached stipend will incentivize private charity, as was the norm through the early part of the Twentieth Century. He describes other ramifications of this plan which will, generally empower individuals, and reduce their dependence on government programs.His arguments are persuasive to me, but I can’t work through their nuances or address the many obvious objections to the idea of a no-strings-attached stipend for everyone in a brief review. The book itself, though, works through many of these and outlines the wide scope of changes that such a plan would bring about. No matter whether the reader agrees with the conclusions or not, the book may stimulate thought and discussion.

⭐I have come to believe that the welfare state is nothing more than a vehicle for egalitarians to transfer income from producers to non producers, not an effort to provide for the poor but as a method to take from the wealthy…and I think this book proves that.This book presents a plan that would do away with all current transfer programs by the government and replace them with a yearly grant of $ 10,000.00 with the proviso that $3,000 of it is used on health insurance and that $2,000 be invested toward retirement. The concept is that individuals would be more efficient and the transfers a moral method in dealing with the issue of social welfare. It is pointed out that this form of transfer would foster a return to a Tocquevillian civil society, where individuals freely provided social safety nets rather have them imposed compulsorily by government. I enjoyed Murray’s discussion of the view of morality described by Thomas Jefferson, Adam Smith and Edmund Burke. This to me clarifies the difference between libertarians and communitarians. I see communitarians arguing that a state must impose the social safety net while libertarians believe that the arrangements come about naturally by individuals themselves, like the invisible hand of God.We are asked in the beginning of the book to suspend our disbelief and consider the plan to be nothing more than a thought experiment, then once the plan is laid out Murray provides interesting points on why the plan is not only feasible but a realistic possibility considering rapid changes in technology, economic growth and political disenchantment.

⭐I found the Introduction, The chapter 11 on Community, as well as chapter 12, the Conclusion offering lot of good history and insight on the dilemma of helping the poor . The book, THE TRAGEDY OF AMERICAN COMPASSION by Marvin Olasky would be a good backup to support the Introduction and Chapter 11 and 12.The Leftist (so called “progressive”) agenda over the past century has created the social and economic problems we have in America in regard to the deterioration of our courts, marriage, individual responsibility, societal values, and counterproductive and bankrupting government social service programs.I think his arguments that the PLAN to give everyone over 21 a yearly stipend is wishful thinking. America has a real enemy. That enemy is the Leftist movement to undermine our Constitution and create government institutions to substitute for what the public can do. In that regard, I agree with Charles Murphy, but I do not see his solution working or would I want such a solution to be tried.What could work is if we resist and reverse what the Left has done to this nation, starting with opening opportunities for the poor–through school choice, eliminating the minimum wage, restoring private property rights, while simultaneously phasing out all welfare programs at the federal level.We need to repair the damage done to our Constitution, restore the rule of law and get rid of revisionism in our judiciary. Repeal the 17th Amendment, the Apportionment Act of 1911, and ratify an amendment consistent with either the version of Article the First as passed by the House or Senate in 1789 — this will help restore the Congress to one where We the People, not special interests and big money, can select those to represent our interests and that of our states. If we want our Constitution amended, it cannot be through the judiciary, but through the process specified in the Constitution.I gave it 2 stars, not because I thought his solution to be sound, but because of the useful insights in his Introduction, Chapters 11.and 12.

⭐This book puts forward an idea that will never (probably) be taken up by politicians but which solves a whole host of social and economic problems. It will also probably annoy those on both the political left and right alike! For me, as a policy advisor, it was a revelation and has completely changed my view on benefits systems. Charles Murray argues his case steadily and logically, the only drawback being that his examples are based on the USA, where, although the problems are applicably to the UK and elsewhere, the mechanisms are different (we have the NHS for example), so some of the ideas have to be ‘translated across’ (an interesting intellectual exercise). It’s a core book for our times – and the ‘flat benefits’ idea goes will with ones on ‘flat taxes’ – and it is an easy read.

⭐very interesting text but murray doesint spend enough time dealing with counter arguments or viewing the other side which is a bit frustrating.

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