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Comment by karzeem | Hacker News Reader

Milton Friedman advocated an interesting, soft version of the minimum income called the negative income tax.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax

An equivalent way to describe Friedman's negative income tax proposal is that everyone pays their taxes as normal and then $20k/year (or however much) is given back to literally everyone, regardless of income.

I like that version because it makes more clear that you don't have perverse incentives with respect to working: you never get more money by working less. The $20k/year is guaranteed unconditionally and you can supplement it with a job if you choose.

That's also the same as the FairTax, which is a major policy proposal in the US. And it involves sending everyone a check each month.

So this idea is actually not that far out for the US, at least.

I should also point out that the FairTax is primarily supported by conservatives at this point, though from my point of view, liberals should be even more supportive.

The FairTax is a sales tax, not an income tax. It's quite different from an income tax, negative or no.

The FairTax as I have heard it advocated included a huge annual transfer payment to redress the highly regressive aspect of all consumption taxes. (If you are poor, you consume 100% or more of income, resulting in paying taxes on all of it. Richer individuals consume a fraction of their income, thus paying a much lower overall rate.) It would instantly be the most extensive wealth transfer program in the world.

you're probably downvoted because you're very clearly wrong about FairTax. it's a very very different thing than from a guaranteed $20k income. FairTax also has the rather creepy distinction than it has an Orwellian propagandist name, because it is not (necessarily) a "fair" tax at all. It's riddled with loopholes and complexity to be exploited, and many folks think it favors the rich and inherited classes, at the expense of the poor/working class.

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