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.
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