Tom Woods hosted a debate with Bleeding Heart Libertarians’s Matt Zwolinski. The topic of the debate was the merits of a basic income guarantee (SEE: No, it isn’t time for a guaranteed income and Should U.S. adults be given a basic income just for being alive?). Woods espoused his reasons opposing it, while Zwolinski argued in favor of it. A lot of people, including libertarians, are in favor of it because it’s a lot more practical and cheaper policy than the current welfare state. It’s believed to decrease the size of government substantially (yeah, right).
You can listen to this hour-long debate embedded below:
The Mises Institute’s David Gordon posted a follow-up to the debate with these four paragraphs:
Last week, Matt Zwolinski, a philosopher from the University of San Diego, argued on the Tom Woods show that libertarians ought to support a basic income guarantee. Woods, genial but sharp and relentless in his questions, brought out the full extent to which Zwolinski’s proposal differs from libertarianism as commonly understood. Zwolinski thinks the basic income guarantee should in ideal circumstances be extended worldwide: if the taxes needed to do this reduced the American standard of living, so be it. Further, a global agency might be needed to carry out this program.
To those libertarians who appeal to property rights in order to block the basic income guarantee, Zwolinski responded with the Georgist point that people did not create natural resources. How then can people claim absolute property rights to these resources? I wonder why Zwolinski thinks that this question may be asked of individual claimants to property, but not to the people in a society taken collectively, “Society” did not create natural resources either. Why then does “society” get to decide what the proper distribution of these resources ought to be?
Zwolinski also appealed to the Lockean proviso, a limit to property rights supported by Robert Nozick. As Nozick took the proviso, though, it would almost never act to limit property rights. It would come into effect only if people are made worse off by the existence of a system of property rights. In fact, of course, people are much better off because there are rights to private property, and Nozick suggests that only in catastrophes could one envision the proviso having any practical importance. (Zwolinski wrongly suggests that David Schmidtz first suggested this way of understanding the proviso, but Nozick advanced it, long before Schmidtz, in Anarchy, State, and Utopia.) How Zwolinski gets from the proviso, thus taken, to a basic income guarantee is not immediately apparent.
Zwolinski’s best argument points to the fact that some people have acquired property unjustly. One cannot then rule out property taxes for a basic income guarantee as taking from people what is justly their own. Woods responded that one must deal with claims of injustice on an individual basis. There is no justification for a tax on all property on the grounds that unjust property titles exist “somewhere.” Zwolinski answered that Woods’ approach permits a great deal of injustice to exist. I take it that he means by this the unjust property titles that have not yet been investigated and overturned. Zwolinski, then, would allow taking away someone’s property through taxes, without showing that his claim to the property was defective. This strikes me as antithetical to libertarianism, but listeners to this broadcast should judge for themselves.
To quote Dagny Taggart: “Do you think I consider this question debatable?”
It is sickening that anyone, of any political persuasion, would consider debating whether government ought to be engaged in the project of robbing citizen A to give to citizen B.
And then to joyfully contemplate the idea going global.
What’s just as repulsive? The notion “well, we are already doing the robbing, this would just be a way of doing it more efficiently.”
The rights of life, liberty and property are subject to risk of theft. A limited government, contracted by a society and formed into a nation, was a choice to relinquish freedom from tax to secure life, liberty and property under rule of law in a constitution for all citizens. This is the night watchman role of government. It is with the public mandate, that government has the prerogative to accomplish this goal by force and persuasion. There is an implicit objective that the cost be efficient to minimize the tax burden on individual citizens whether they are direct taxes or indirect taxes.
Government, accomplishing the goal of life, liberty and property by force, is empowered to establish a permanent constabulary for settling internal disputes between citizens and raising an army in case of external threat; there is no mandate for government to maintain a standing army during times of peace. Accomplishing the goal of life, liberty and property by persuasion implies methods that may include a negative income tax. This may not compromise the role of the night watchman, rather it may be viewed as an efficient government policy that seeks to minimize direct and indirect taxes, as a means of government carrying out it’s role.
This type of persuasion may be both more efficient and less intrusive for limited government actions to achieve the goal of securing life and liberty, as well as property, rather than with outright force. In this way, persuasion may be viewed as prevention and force viewed as intervention. A negative income tax may then be considered as a persuasive, preventive policy prescription that seeks to minimize a forceful, interventionist policy prescription and minimize the burden of taxes on individual citizens. A negative income tax for citizens may also foster an environment for free trade, creative destruction, promote general prosperity across the nation and incent entrepreneurship by more citizens without compromising or expanding the role of government and increasing the burden of taxes on individual citizens.
Here are some rough numbers for one such scheme:
WA: ~16 working age
RA: ~64 retirement age
WF: ~160mn workforce of ~320mn citizens
MW: ~$27K/yr Individual Median Wage
FPL: ~$12K/yr Individual Federal Poverty Level for WA-RA (~45% of MW) *
ZeroToFPL: ~45mn number below FPL
FPLtoMW: ~35mn (WF/2 – ZeroToFPL) number between FPL and MW
Minimum = ZeroToFPL X FPL = $540bn/yr (labor unemployment subsidy: < FPL)
Taper = (FPLtoMW X FPL)/2 = $210bn/yr (business payroll subsidy: FPL to MW)
Maximum = Minimum + Taper = $750bn/yr
* ~$24K is the FPL for a zero-growth family of four.
“Accomplishing the goal of life, liberty and property by persuasion implies methods that may include a negative income tax. ”
a) the watchman does not use persuasion on criminals. It uses force, as it should. It is not legitimate for it to initiate force on citizens.
b) No, proper watchman government does not imply what you call a “negative income tax”, a euphemism for coerced distribution of wealth. Let citizens figure out a way to pay for the watchman without coercion. Then, let citizens never — NEVER — imply, create, perpetuate, sanction or allow the government to be the force agent of taking wealth from one citizen (stopping meanwhile to feed itself) then give the remainder to another citizen.
I don’t care how cool your shorthand gibberish is for it, you are condoning tyranny.
We currently spend ~$1tn on welfare[1], not counting social security or medicare and another $1tn on national security[2]. Note that the NATO spending target is 2% of GDP. Tally up the costs for yourself.
a) The night watchman can use any reasonable method, under the contract, to fulfill his duties using the tax dollars collected for that purpose.
b) There is no coercion if a contract exists and that contract exists in the form of the constitution.
Taxes reflect the cost of the night watchman and minimizing those costs is an implicit objective of the night watchman, otherwise the job is not properly getting done and you vote the bums out and put new ones in that will do the job properly. The whole idea of the night watchman was to save the citizen some of the time and money that they would have otherwise spent on the task so they could be more productive for themselves and their families, without worry. Maximizing productivity may minimize tax burdens and the more citizens that are productive, the better.
That’s not to say that the tax code and federal register is not an unfathomable mess that sorely needs reform, and …, …
[1] Crs report: welfare spending the largest item in the federal Budget | Jeff Sessions | Congressional Research Service
[2] Total U.S. National Security Spending, 2015-2016 | POGO
What’s more important in this argument about proper government is not “welfare spending” but “social services” spending. Here are the numbers for FY 2104
Social Services — 2,306.20/64.63%
Military — 651.70/18.26%
Veterans Affairs — 149.60/4.19%
General Admin — 232.70/6.52%
Interest on the Debt — 228.00/6.39%
Total Fed Gov’t Spending FY 2014 Actual 3,568.20
Population 317 billion
Spending per person: 11,256.15
source:
http://www.usfederalbudget.us/federal_budget_estimate_vs_actual_2014_XXbs1n_G0
Most federal spending goes to the support, interest and direct spending on Social Services.
This is a violation of the concept of a “watchdog” government.
Yup, our watchdog is about as alert as Jed Clampett’s hound dog. We have to cut everywhere to slice off about $500bn/year just to break even. I don’t want any more taxes or crazy new laws, either.
http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/yearrev2014_0.html
That’s a good link you have up there. I’ll spare you the figures on the OCC report.