So, I had a recent debate in which some people opposed my ideas on the basis that they increase the size of government too much. They even trotted out the tired old term "central planning" on the basis of the raw numbers of my proposals alone. Look, I admit, my ideas are expensive, but I implement my ideas in the best way possible, as I see it, to ensure maximum well being, which includes freedom given my social/left libertarian bend possible. I find a weird dichotomy when I debate different ideologies. When i debate social democrats or progressives, I often come off as a libertarian, because, well, I am of sorts. But when I debate libertarians, they think I'm much more like a mainstream liberal or progressive. Again, part of that weird dichotomy where I don't fit in anywhere. But, that said, I feel the need to classify my opinions.
Where I stand ideologically
My main/core ideology is essentially "indepentarianism", which is a moderate left libertarian philosophy (given most left libertarians are socialists and anarchists and I'm agnostic on the question of capitalism) created by UBI activist Karl Widerquist to promote the idea of a universal basic income a way not just to solve poverty, but to guarantee individual freedom from coercion. I also believe, as an extension of that core philosophy, that medical care specifically should be universalized as well, as it's an industry that focuses on core well being, and it being in mostly private for profit hands seems to have a horrible track record in accomplishing "indepentarian" principles as I see them.
Bigger government = more freedom?
While basic income and medicare for all are expensive, much more expensive than alternatives, they are the solutions we need to truly "solve" the problems with American capitalism. Even these might not solve all problems, but they are the most impactful policies that would help to do so. Basic income is expensive, it increases the size of government a lot. $3.6 trillion, or around $2.7 trillion in net spending increases by my estimation. But what do you get out of this? Well, you get a safety net that guarantees, by definition, to solve poverty of 100% of American citizens. Because each person's income would be, by definition, above the federal poverty line. Will this mean that everyone will live a perfect life? No. As some will tell you even the poverty line is a flawed metric, and the real "living wage" or whatever is likely far higher. However, I don't believe, through basic income alone, that we can accomplish that due to the sheer costs and negative effects on the economy it would have. But we can solve the core "poverty" issue. Moreover, basic income, being the one safety net that guarantees citizens an income by right of citizenship as a matter of principle, not only solves poverty, it resolves a lot of economic coercion in the system.
Other ideas do not do this. Welfare might be cheaper, but with that cost efficiency comes lots of bureaucracy, form filling to acquire and maintain benefits, and a maze of incentives and disincentives to encourage certain behavior. You need to look for a job. You need to accept a job if offered. If you get a job you lose the income. You can't buy this, but you can buy that. You can only have certain assets and incomes to ensure you're truly needy. If you don't have kids you're screwed. You can't smoke a little MJ on the side. If you're on it too long, we might kick you off. All of these incentives and disincentives are freedom limiting, stopping people from pursuing their own path. The goal of the safety net as it exists isn't just to provide for people temporarily if they hit hard times, but to reform people into what the government thinks the model citizen should be. It is inherently authoritarian. And with it comes a lot of economic coercion. It can even be seen as punitive, given reforms of the recent decades that seem to be intended to make people participating in these programs as miserable as possible in order to keep them off of them. They are a failure from a left libertarian perspective.
Even a negative income tax has this problem, and it's just a cheaper UBI done another way. The problem I have with NIT is that it does have a barrier to entry, you need to fill out a tax form. It would be notoriously easy for an administration to sneak in work requirements there that would be difficult to remove politically, given the cult of work that exists in this country. It introduces means testing. it introduces bureaucracy. An NIT runs the risk of just becoming welfare. It might end up looking closer to the UK's universal credit than a basic income if not we're careful.
So I'm of the opinion that a UBI maximizes freedom more than other ideas. Welfare and an NIT are cheaper, but they allow the government to exert far more control over peoples' lives, and use financial "incentives" to pressure people to behave in certain ways. They offer a carrot and a stick approach to reforming people into what the government believes the ideal citizen should be. This is dystopian, but often goes overlooked among many right libertarian philosophies, because they do not recognize the rule of these pressures, or even worse, support them because they don't believe the government should be subsidizing people any way. Not that this applies to this specific person who I was having a debate with, but that's where the mentality I see as counter to mine leads. It sounds counterintuitive, but the fact that basic income is such a large program due to its universality and unconditionality is what makes it superior to other options. Because it's the only safety net that would fully solve the problems with the coerciveness of the welfare state as it exists. The fact that other ideas have things like means testing and requirements makes them coercive by definition to me. And even if they don't show these flaws now, they are vulnerable to them in the future from people trying to reform them. Only a basic income can truly preserve the right to say no. Anything that pressures the poor with economic carrots and sticks is inherently coercive, because without a basic income, they don't have a right to resist the pressures government and/or private business with to impose on them.
Healthcare is the same way to some extent
Supporting medicare for all is just an extension of logic that gets me to support UBI. Healthcare is tied to jobs and is prohibitively expensive for those without them. Even if we implemented a basic income, people would be crushed by costs without at minimum extensive public services for the poor, similar to the medicaid expansion. But even the medicaid expansion is flawed. It's essentially welfare, and comes with the same trappings and bureaucracy I'm trying to avoid. Various states aren't participating in expansions and for those who are, people often have to navigate through bloated bureaucracies to get care. i know here in PA you need to sign up through the "compass" system used for welfare, answering tons of ridiculous, degrading questions that poke their nose into your private life. And if you make over a certain income cut off, you're forced off of the system and have to buy insurance, which is often difficult to afford and doesn't cover anything. Healthcare under capitalism is flawed, and a government solution makes the most sense.
Medicare for all would largely save people money, even if taxes are higher. heck, the taxes largely replace premiums and costs that people would pay under the private system, so I'm not sure why people romanticize private healthcare so much. All not having medicare for all does is save the government money, and an argument exclusively about the size of government comes off as right libertarian in practice. If you don't want the government to do something on principle, that sounds like a right wing argument, as right wingers are skeptical of government and see freedom in a negative sense, implying reduced control over peoples' lives.
But in practice, how does the government running healthcare negatively impact a person;'s actual freedom? If anything the reduced financial stress and not being tied to a job to acquire basic needs would increase freedom in my ideology, so this just serves as more evidence that bigger government can actually increase freedom in a way a private market system can't. And to me, that's what really matters.
How big would government be with my ideas anyway?
The person in question accused my ideas of blowing up the government budget in a way that would have 65-70% of the country's GDP going toward the government, but in reality the amount is much lower.
While my basic income plan is $3.565 trillion we would save $876 billion from spending cuts and tax reform. If we include the taxes on social security and unemployment, which replace the "cut" I would otherwise impose on those programs, the amount would increase by $285 billion, putting us up to $1.161 trillion of my UBI costs coming from existing spending. That's almost 1/3. This means only $2.4 trillion or so would come from new spending from new taxation.
Medicare for all comes almost entirely from new government spending, although many costs are spent in the private sector any way, meaning I don't believe a lot changes, but it would probably cost around $1.8 trillion given my suggested tax increases, minus cutting a little bit of defense spending.
This means that the total net increase in government size would be $4.2 trillion.Given the existing federal budget is $6 trillion, we would be spending $10.2 trillion. And this would give us UBI, medicare for all, and several of Biden's initatives like infrastructure spending and free childcare/preK. If we wanted to expand to free college with student loan forgiveness as my other, final plank of my own economic new deal, we would be spending closer to $10.4 trillion. Current GDP is $21.4 trillion, so this would amount to 48.6% GDP being spent by the federal government in net. Much lower than the 60-70% I'm accused of.
Now, to be fair, local governments would spend more, but I also assume UBI + M4A would likely greatly reduce those governments' costs, between being able to scrap local safety nets, government spending on healthcare, and social services spent on homelessness, crime related from poverty, etc. Assuming they spend $3.1 trillion a year, that would bump total expenditures to 63%, which is awfully high, but again, I assume a lot of that could be replaced. Apparently 22% of public welfare, and while not all of it would be cut, a significant part of it would, as UBI and M4A would render those programs redundant. Another 10% is healthcare directly, which would be replaced. Even more so the federal government foots the bill for a lot of this, so by eliminating these programs on a federal level we're reducing state spending significantly. Assuming a 30% reduction, state and local spending would shrink by over $900 billion to $2.1 trillion, meaning that GDP spent on all government would shrink to 58.9%. Still large, but quite a bit less than 70%. And it's for a good cause. Both of the programs driving up this increase would greatly increase the amount of freedom we would have compared to the status quo.
Conclusion
I would like to offer a firm rebuttal to anyone who questions my libertarian credentials on the basis of the size of government as I support it. It's not about size, it's about how you use it. Worrying about government size is an inherently right libertarian argument, basing your view of libertarianism on the idea that a bigger government inherently stifles freedom. But my proposals, largely by virtue of their large size, increase freedom. While taxes would be higher, people would be freer than ever as the government wouldn't tell people what to do for the most part, and people would have their basic needs taken care of, liberating them from the financial coercion that would otherwise exist.
Nothing about my ideas involve central planning, command economies, or communism. I find the right loves to argue on those terms. No, I don't want authoritarian communism. I want libertarian social democracy. Huge difference.
No comments:
Post a Comment