This makes America’s economy so lousy that nobody will ever lend the U.S. government any money ever again. And everybody who has already lent the U.S. government money is sending bill collectors dunning us to pay the money back. So we’ll have to settle up the national debt—$22 trillion.
Okay, that still leaves us with $47.5 trillion to give to the poor.
But that will mean a much larger federal budget. It’s estimated that Medicare for All would cost $3.2 trillion a year. And a Universal Basic Income would cost $3.8 trillion a year. (Free college tuition is just a rounding error of about $70 billion a year. We won’t even count that.)
The Green New Deal is harder to price. It’s more of a letter to Santa than a piece of legislation. The “I want a pony” might mean an old Shetland free from the local animal shelter. Or it might mean a racehorse sired by Northern Dancer, selling for $26 million. But Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez herself has mentioned a figure of $10 trillion over the next decade for the Green New Deal, and let’s take her word for it: $1 trillion a year.
So current spending of $4.75 trillion + $3.2 trillion + $3.8 trillion + $1 trillion = almost $13 trillion.
A Robin Hood president (assuming he or she has a Maid Marian House of Representatives and a Friar Tuck Senate) will have $47.5 trillion to give to the poor. But divide $47.5 trillion by $13 trillion and we see that all the money that all the rich people have will last three years and eight months—running out right at the end of Robin Hood’s four-year presidential term.
If Robin wants to get reelected, that band of Merry Men will have to invent some new kind of economic arithmetic, perhaps the kind of economic arithmetic they have in Venezuela.
On the Other Hand . . . Just Give Them the Money
What makes people poor has been debated for centuries by scholars, moralists, theorists, policy makers, and pundits like me—a bunch of idiots engaged in a huge waste of time. What makes people poor is not having money.
According to the U.S. Census there are 38.1 million poor people in America. These people are not poor because the federal government doesn’t spend money on poor people. It does.
The Congressional Research Service keeps track of these things. The CRS is a nonpartisan agency in the Library of Congress—serene and calm midst the political chaos of Washington. (Which is not so rare as one might think. Although some other nonpartisan federal agencies may be so serene and calm that they’ve nodded off at their desks, because the CRS figures below come with a note: “FY2016—most recent year for which federal spending data were available.”)
Anyway, the CRS has a report called “Federal Spending on Benefits and Services for People with Low Income.”
In the report we see that the federal government spends $877.5 billion annually on these benefits and services. And let us note that this spending does not include Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, or Affordable Care Act subsidies.
However, the $877.5 billion does include $467.8 billion spent on health care for the poor in programs such as Medicaid. Working on the assumption that 38.1 million poor people is bad enough, and that we don’t want them to be poor and sick, let’s not count health care costs as “benefits and services.” Let’s just call it common human decency.
Subtracting $467.8 billion from $877.5 billion leaves us with $409.7 billion. This is still a lot of money. Why does spending it on poor people seem to be so ineffective at eliminating poverty?
Maybe the answer is to be found, of all places, on the Republican House Budget Committee website, where the following statement appears:
There are at least 92 federal programs designed to help lower-income Americans. For instance, there are dozens of education and job-training programs, 17 different food-aid programs, and over 20 housing programs.
Many people may think that Republicans don’t want to “help lower-income Americans.” I feel that’s harsh. But, for the sake of argument, let’s stipulate that Republicans don’t want to help. What interests me about their statement is not its implicit criticism of federal poverty program surfeit (explicit criticism follows). What interests me is the phrase, with italics added, “There are at least 92 federal programs . . .”
These are Republicans! We’ve just said—for the sake of argument—that they deplore poverty programs, that they want to get rid of them all. You’d think they’d be keeping careful track of each and every poverty program they want to eliminate. Yet even Republicans don’t know how many of these programs exist. Nobody does.
Just give poor people the money.
Divide $409.7 billion by 38.1 million and each poor person gets $10,753.28 a year. It’s not any more than we’re spending now. And it’s not like it’s going to make them stinking rich. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services puts the poverty line for an individual at $12,490 a year.
But there’s no law against poor people having a friend (although there may be some rule against it in one of the 92+ federal programs). And the HHS poverty line for a household of two is $16,910.
Buddy up and you get $21,507. And a household of four—current poverty line $25,750—gets $43,013.
Just give them the money.
No, I don’t know exactly how to do it. As a policy wonk I’m all wonk and no policy. But the government is damn efficient at taking away by means of payroll withholding, and I’m sure it can be equally efficient at handing out by payroll forthcoming. Or something like that.
Just give them the money.
It’s Time to Make Rich People Uncomfortable Again
Lately there has been a lot of anger and indignation about wealth inequality. Some blame this on . . . wealth inequality. I blame it on rich
