Thanksgiving in Switzerland

Last weekend, my wife found an article in the NY Times Sunday Magazine that she thought I should blog about. I have to agree.

The article discusses proposed legislation for a minimum income law; income given to all, just for breathing!

This idea sounds horrible except that it comes from the Swiss, notably the most effective government in the European Union (EU) and, possibly, in the world. Good local education, local welfare, high employment. The lowest spending in the EU at 34% of GDP.

I have suggested a limited version of this as a means to get rid of government bloat. The limit is that only those in need would get it.

In the US, we spend about $1.2 trillion/year on the poor. The poor comprise about 21.8% of children under 18, 13.7% of adults between 18 and 64 and 9.1% of those 65 and older.

A total of 46.5 million people.

Divide it up and we get $25,806 per person or $39,344 per adult.

Even one third of that in direct payment would be a boon to the poor (the bottom 20% of earners) and a huge savings to taxpayers. If they ever get the Obamacare website's income verification software working, we can do this and eliminate 30% of the federal government and nearly half of all state governments.

Poor folks could buy their own health insurance (without subsidy) and have about $4,100 left over for food and housing. Not bad outside of New York and New Jersey.

Throw in Medicare spending of $536 billion on 49.5 million beneficiaries and we get another $10,828 for them, more than adequate for them to buy their own insurance in all but about 10 states; allow insurance to cross state lines and this goes away too because of bigger risk pools. Throw in private charity and this is free too, allowing seniors to relax.

The rule used to be that nobody could pay more than five times as much as anyone else. Now it's three times under Obamacare so virtually everyone's rates have to go up to maintain the status quo; remember that Obamacare does nothing to reduce healthcare costs, it only addresses insurance.

The best part is that liberals could pay the whole tab and they'd pay less than they do now. Mean-spirited, greedy conservatives could give more to charities of our own choosing.

Correction
My old friend John found a math error in my Business as Usual post. I miscalculated the weight of a trillion pennies as 2,750 tons.

It should have been 2.75 million tons.