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Dittohead not said:Sounds like something liberals and conservatives could agree on. There aren't many issues like that.I think you're wrong.cpwill said:Nah. I betcha if I turned this into a poll, it would be rejected by both sides, but more by liberals.
Try it and see.
Outlined best in this thread here, where I tied it to a Perfectly Progressive Flat Tax on Income, which is not part of this poll (only vote on the structure of the NIT proposal, not on the tax proposal, or specific rates).
Proposed: Replace the amalgamation of federal welfare programs (not including Medicaid, which is it's own bucket of worms) for our low income families with a Negative Income Tax that taxes at a rate of -50% of all not monies earned below 200% of the Federal Poverty Line, to be distributed bi-monthly.
The Federal Poverty Levels at current do not distinguish between children and adults, but state that it is $11,770 for a household of 1 and $15,930 for a household of 2. I extrapolate from that to create an FPL of $11,770 per adult, and $4,160 per child.
Work Requirements: 20 hours of work for a single-adult, and 30 hours of work for a married-couple. Work includes, but is not limited to: paid employment, volunteer work, and (for those on unemployment) a combination of volunteer work and/or job-search activities. Attending an educational or training program counts as 10 hours of work per week, unless that training program also pays (such as, for example, police academy, or an apprenticeship), in which case the full hours worked will count towards the requirement. Like in Maine, volunteer opportunities would be made available to those unable to find employment (just as the unemployment office now works to link unemployed persons with job offerings).
Child Support Requirement: For children of unmarried parents, 1/2 of the FPL for the child will be subtracted from the subsidy of the non-caregiver and given to the caregiver parent to take care of the child's needs. Each parent of a child will support the child.
Delay-Based Incentives: People currently on government assistance face high real nominal tax rates via the loss of benefits - occasionally seeing rates of more than 100% (see full proposal thread for a breakdown of some of this), which strongly discourages advancement and helps trap people in poverty. While this proposal can reduce that rate, in order to avoid further disincentivizing advancement, any reduction in subsidy will be delayed by 1 or 2 months (so, every raise not only gets you a raise, but a bonus), whereas any increase in subsidy as a result of loss of pay will be reflected in the next pay period. In this way we can pay people more for working more, without creating a budget buster.
Cost: The cost of this program above was covered by the replacement of the programs. The Federal Government spent $383 Bn on non-Medicaid welfare (SNAP, TANF, etc) in 2016. It spent an additional $150 Bn on SSDI. The EITC is worth about $70 Bn, and the Child Tax Credit is about $60 Billion. Recognizing that the program in the full proposal would replace the full child tax credit (as well as all other tax credits), but in this poll only replaces it for those below 200% of the FPL, we divide the Tax Expenditure Savings by 2/3rds to give us $40 Bn, for a total amount of $643 Billion. I'm unsure offhand how to calculate in the savings seen by additionally getting rid of the Standard Deduction for low income families (since those families are now paying a negative rate instead of a positive one), but they will additionally be significant.