In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare StateAmerica's population is wealthier than any in history. Every year, the American government redistributes more than a trillion dollars of that wealth to provide for retirement, health care, and the alleviation of poverty. We still have millions of people without comfortable retirements, without adequate health care, and living in poverty. Only a government can spend so much money so ineffectually. The solution is to give the money to the people. This is the Plan, a radical new approach to social policy that defies any partisan label. Murray suggests eliminating all welfare transfer programs at the federal, state, and local levels and substituting an annual $10,000 cash grant to everyone age twenty-one or older. In Our Hands describes the financial feasibility of the Plan and its effects on retirement, health care, poverty, marriage and family, work, neighborhoods and civil society. |
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accessed October affluent after-tax income age fifty age twenty-one American amount annual annuity appendix assume assumptions average baby benefits billion Budget bureaucracy calculations cash grant Census chapter Charles Murray child choices Congressional Budget Office continue couple current system disincentives dollars earned income economic effect estimate example expenditures federal figure food stamps forty-five-year groups happy health-care human incentive income tax increase insurance companies investment Joan Kennedy Taylor large numbers live low-income marriage married married couples median Medicaid Medicare ment needs negative income tax payment percent poor population poverty line poverty threshold programs projections real return require Research Resident Fellow Resident Scholar Social Security Social Security Administration society someone spending subsidy surtax system The Plan TANF tax rate tion transfers U.S. Bureau U.S. Department underclass Visiting Scholar vocation voluntary associations welfare woman women young