I’ve been thinking about the below Editor’s Note,
Editor’s Note: One issue that is not refuted in the above is stolen identities and organized crime. I suspect the bulk of fraud is via this mechanism. In my experience, government is ill equipped to deal with fraud as the presumption of any government program is that the applicant is eligible.
William is in fact correct. Fraud is likely coming from stolen identities, organized crime, and professional crooks. The honest reality is that the fraudsters are always several steps ahead of normal people. Think of it like this: to keep the honest person honest you put a lock on your front door. However, the burglar doesn’t care that you have a lock and has a device to pry said door open. Bottom line, if the bad guys want it, they will achieve their goal. In this case, the fraud is committed by folks who know how to avoid detection and may even have people on the inside doing the dirty work for them.
I am proposing a solution, unlike many in the Republican Party, I know I want to “throw this out there.” It’s not perfect but here goes.
Universal Basic Income.
Yep, the 90-day guy called it the “stupidest thing he has ever heard. Saying that’s socialism.” The only thing he knows about socialism is that Sean Hannity rails against it. He is loyal to the folks at Fox News. He describes his generation and Republicans in general pretty well, be against everything. Folks voting NO on everything is not a long-term strategy. This mentality is what led us to Obamacare. When asked for his plan, he shrugged. With the amount of TV he consumes, he should know we are facing a serious crossroads in our country.
Think of it this way, we have so many government programs: Section 8, SNAP, disability, unemployment, welfare, just to name a few, what if we replaced them all. Replace them with 1 federal government program. Universal Income isn’t going to be $100,000, not even close. Income would be verified by the IRS annually with your tax return. If you find work and earn an income over ____ you come off the program. Steal my identity and apply? You will be rejected because I earn too much income. This would be verified by the IRS not an administrative law judge. Lose your job during the year? You would have documentation of that to be sent in with your application! To quote Dave Ramsey, folks on UBI (Universal Basic Income) aren’t going to be seeing the inside of very many restaurants. This will probably be in the neighborhood of $35-55k a year depending on where you live, not work.
We have to start thinking differently about an ever-changing work environment. People are having their jobs outsourced overseas constantly. Stores close simply because they “aren’t making enough profit” AI and quantum computing are going to replace a lot of jobs. When workers retire, the replacement is hired for half or two thirds the salary to save money. This constant cutting of expenses as the basic structure of profit and loss statements does not bode well for the workforce long term.
Our workforce of the future needs to be viewed differently too. Some people are disabled and cannot work or cannot work full time. Others will lack a skillset to work. Let’s be real. When Schools and Universities are saying that graduating high school students (incoming class) only read at a 4th grade level, we have a real issue! That isn’t going to get better with time. That generation is going to be left toiling and twisting in the wind. We shut down our country for 3 years and it has consequences which are just now being felt. Many didn’t finish high school/college. Many students also picked up bad work habits due to the Covid shutdown. Most jobs do not get filled permanently. If they have something, it’s just on a temporary basis. Sadly, these items are basically uncorrectable. Automation is only going to eliminate more positions which again is making the population more and more unemployed. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have both spoken about importing folks to the USA on H1-B? Visas to work here. Due to the structure of our educational system, that is the future of our workforce folks.
Paying for it? Well, this is the stumbling block. I’m too lazy to look it up as of press time but collapsing all the federal/state aid programs and their subsequent employees would free up quite a bit of cash to fund this. We do not know how much fraud is truly going on, but this collapses several programs into one program. Streamlines the process and makes it so theIRS will be annually verifying income. It may not be the answer, but I think it’s a start. I have also heard Mark Zuckerburg, and others discuss funding this with some of their own wealth, so there is that.
As far as the obvious Fox News comeback, what will stop people from just not working, or working for cash under the table? There isn’t, but I will say $35-50k is not a whole lot of money, so your lifestyle won’t be great. Much like my remark about food stamps, I highly doubt those folks are using them to buy a filet mignon.
Make the application in person only, verified by a government issued ID, and must have a bank account verified in their name. If they do not possess all three of these, sorry can’t help you. No judge to sign off, no paperwork mistakes. Income verified and viola. As mentioned above, IRS checked each year for fraud purposes. Get caught, you are arrested and permanently removed from the program. Check has to go to an address not a PO Box. Will it stop all fraud? No. Will folks on the program use the funds for illicit activities? Sure. The point isn’t to stop all fraud going on, that’s impossible. But my idea is to make it a lot more difficult, that’s all.
If you hate my idea…. May I respectfully ask for your submission?
The Chief
Editor’s Note: I don’t wish to speak directly to the merits of this idea, although collapsing the infamous social safety net into a handful of programs instead of the thousands of existing and overlapping programs being administered currently appears to have merit. I just want to remind you of the plans that Joe Biden had for the IRS. Biden wanted every financial transaction in the United States reported to and tracked by the IRS. The goal of the plan was that the IRS would become our financial Big Brother. Part of the proposal was that the IRS would eliminate income tax filing for individuals. At year end, they would either send you a tax bill or a refund for overpaid taxes. One reason for the program was to eliminate fraud (that it would boost tax revenue was assumed as well).