Milton Friedman - The Negative Income Tax

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Recommends tolmasky · 2013-03 · on “Want to Help People? Just Give Them Money”

Milton Friedman was a proponent (an originator?) of the idea of a negative income tax (as opposed to services). The idea of course, is that the problem of being poor is money , not services. Rather than explain it here, you can see him summing it up: [this video]

Recommends backprojection · 2013-10 · on “Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult”

There's still an incentive to work with a negative income tax. This is an interesting discussion about it: [this video]

Recommends mbesto · 2013-10 · on “New dutch political party wants € 1,000 basic income for everyone”

I assume this is akin to Milton Friedman's negative tax: [this video] I think it's brilliant. The major issue would be how to do a transition to it and what the "magic number" is.

Recommends jfoutz · 2014-08 · on “The New Luddites: What if technological innovation is a job-killer after all?”

Which is the point of the deduction. Any work at all is better than sitting around doing nothing. - I'd suggest you check out Friedman's original position. [this video] It's elegant.

Recommends raleighm · 2016-12 · on “Ask YC: Any Updates on the Basic Income Project?”

Friedman himself would disagree with you. He supported a related idea - a negative income tax. Hear him describe it here: [this video] . This is not a capitalism vs socialism or left vs right issue.

Recommends andriesm · 2017-03 · on “Why we should all have a basic income”

What I really don't get is, why do everyone advocate for universal basic income, instead of a negative income tax. The negative income tax model achieves the same basic income with less negative motivation for people who want to pursue work at the low-end. It also avoids wastefully paying it to people who don't need it. This is my inspiration : [this video]

Recommends tomohawk · 2019-03 · on “What It’s Like to Grow Up with More Money Than You’ll Ever Spend”

When people focus on inequality, are they doing so because they love the poor and want to do something for them, or because they hate/envy the rich? Too often, it's the latter. Instead of UBI, a negative income tax is a much better approach. There's a lot of info out there about it, but here's a nice intro: [this video]

Cites crusso · 2012-08 · on “Why you can't be anything you want to be”

Basic Income isn't Libertarian at all. Friedman wasn't a Basic Income proponent. He was a proponent of negative taxation. He was only interested in being consistent with the way we treat income tax and welfare. He felt that the welfare manager's job of determining exactly how to administer relief to recipients was something that couldn't be done properly. He preferred just giving cash based upon income levels on a sliding scale. [this video] Given the abuse of the Welfare system over the half century since Friedman supported negative taxation, I don't doubt that he would have different views and controls for such a system were he alive today. A lot of ideas sounded good 50 or 100 years ago that w