LibertyPen
7 HN recommenders · recommended in 18 months, 2012–2022
14:46 · 569K views · May 11, 2012
A 1968 Firing Line interview in which Milton Friedman explains the negative income tax, a proposal to replace welfare bureaucracy with direct payments.
The go-to primary source in basic income threads for Friedman's negative income tax idea.
20 comments from Hacker News
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
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
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
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.
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.