General Welfare
A negative income tax is intended to create a single system that would not only pay for government, but would also fulfill the social goal of making sure that there was a minimum level of income for all. It is theorized that, with an NIT, the need for minimum wage, food stamps, welfare, social security programs and other government assistance programs could be eliminated, thus reducing the administrative effort and cost to a fraction of what it is under the current system, as well as eliminating the perverse incentives created by these overlapping aid programs, e.g. when a minimum wage worker who earns a little more nets out with less income because he is newly ineligible for aid. The worker is stuck in a welfare trap and has no incentive to seek higher wages.
A NIT does not disrupt low-wage markets, whereas a minimum wage makes certain very low end jobs impossible (as anyone whose labour is valued at less than the minimum wage must be unemployed). A NIT would therefore increase the availability of cheap labour, which would enable businesses to do domestically some of the work which they would otherwise have to outsource to other countries.
A NIT would reduce administrative overhead, since the large bureaucracies responsible for administering taxation and welfare systems, with the multitude of rules, thresholds and different applications required, could be eliminated. The resources saved by eliminating these bureaucracies could then be spent on more productive government activities, or returned to the people via tax cuts.
A NIT is also expected to have an immediate stabilizing effect as well as a positive influence on the cycle of economic "boom and bust" (during recession, the minimum income aids individuals' confidence whilst businesses are aided by option to lower wages).
Read more about this topic: Negative Income Tax
Famous quotes containing the words general and/or welfare:
“When General Motors has to go to the bathroom ten times a day, the whole country’s ready to let go. You heard of that market crash in ‘29? I predicted that.... I was nursing a director of General Motors. Kidney ailment, they said; nerves, I said. Then I asked myself, “What’s General Motors got to be nervous about?” “Overproduction,” I says. “Collapse.””
—John Michael Hayes (b. 1919)
“I have great faith in ‘ordinary parents.’ Who has a child’s welfare more at heart than his ordinary parent? It’s been my experience that when parents are given the skills to be more helpful, not only are they able to use these skills, but they infuse them with a warmth and a style that is uniquely their own.”
—Haim Ginott (20th century)