$10,000 a year for everyone and universal healthcare

• The amount a person gets is adjusted downward by 20% of their income over $25,000 (capped at $5,000, i.e. everyone gets at least $5,000).
• The $10k yearly grant kicks in at age 21.
• Murray suggests some reforms that will make health insurance affordable (he calculates it at $3,000/person/year, taken out of the $10k they get):
  • Legally obligate insurers to treat the population (all ages) as a single pool.
    • But to counterbalance this, he requires everyone to use part of their $10k grant to buy healthcare (on the free market).
  • Treat medical insurance provided to employees as taxable income. (Isn't it already?)
    • Decouples insurance from employment; gives some people incentive to choose more competitive insurance.
  • Repeal medical licensing laws and alter tort law to make it easy to write legally binding waivers.
    • The desired result here is to make it possible to run (profitable) clinics for "minor repairs" that won't be sued out of existence for unforeseeable problems.
    • Compares current system to requiring anyone opening a diner to be required to hire a cook that can pass a master chef exam.
    • Pretty sure he's not saying doctors should no longer be licensed, just that it should be possible to get "minor repairs" done by qualified people that aren't licensed doctors.
• This Plan makes no changes to current tax structure (you still pay the same amount, same deductions, etc.).
• Income transfer programs that will be eliminated (from Appendix A of the book):
  • Retirement and disability payments
  • Medicare/veterans care/SCHIP
  • Unemployment compensation
  • TANF/EITC/child tax credit
  • Food stamps/school lunch/WIC
  • Housing assistance
  • Pell grants/head start/Stafford loans/work-study programs
  • Community development block grants
  • Transportation subsidies/Amtrak
  • Farming subsidies/corporate welfare/ARPA/energy conservation
  • Doesn't apply a strict libertarian definition of "transfer" here. For example, state-funded education stays.
  • He provides calculations to show that in most if not all cases, the grant easily replaces these transfers.
• The Plan provides for a universal passport (issued to citizens at birth) that establishes eligibility.
• The Plan requires recipients have a bank account for funds to be deposited into.

• While it's not libertarianism by a long shot (Murray says if he could wave a wand and eliminate transfer payments altogether he'd do it—as would I), it gets rid of a lot of government bureaucracy and entitlement programs and in many ways stops rewarding bad behavior and incentivizes good behavior.
• Guaranteed income; guaranteed retirement if you invest a portion (he suggests $2k and provides projections showing retirement income based on conservative returns), but also control over your investments (higher risk, higher reward).
• Universal healthcare, yay (for socialists)! But also, free market healthcare, yay (for libertarians)!
• It will cost less than the current system starting in 2011 ($549B less in 2020).
• Provides only for citizens, not aliens (legal or illegal).
• It disincentivizes:
  • Births to single women (correlated with high crime), whether living at home or on their own.
    • But increases the likelihood of collecting child support: the father has known income.
    • And makes it easier for low-income couples to have children.
  • "Sponging" off others: known income source means it's harder to live rent-free and claim penury.
  • Not working: a $1k/month job gives $1k/month more income without reducing the grant.
• Does it also disincentivize work?
  • Sure, some people will band together, rent a house at the beach, and surf all day. But that gets old fast.
  • For someone earning $25k (and thus getting the full $10k grant), not working reduces their wages by $25k.
    • Plan "lures people into working until they cannot afford to quit".
• Makes it easier for one parent to stay home with children if desired.
• Returns some former government functions to community, which:
  • Reduces moral hazard (government has to be morally indifferent; private charities do not)
  • Bureaucracy has its own welfare as its highest interest, and incentives to get more clients and funding, but private philanthropy has to attract volunteers by providing satisfying work and donors by assuring them money goes to the organization's clients