Morning Must-Read: Mike Konczal: The Pragmatic Libertarian Case for a Basic Income Doesn’t Add Up

Mike Konczal: The Pragmatic Libertarian Case for a Basic Income Doesn’t Add Up “For the pragmatic case to work…

…it has to be founded on an accurate understanding of the current welfare state. And here I think Zwolinski is wrong…. He describes a welfare state where… bureaucracy… overwhelms and suffocates the individual…. Zwolinski puts significant weight on the idea that there are… 126 welfare programs spending nearly $660 billion dollars…. Medicaid… $228 billion… six big programs… $212 billion dollars…. What about the remaining 119 programs?… Quick examples involve $2.5 billion to facilitate adoption assistance, $500 million to help with homeless shelters, $250 million to help provide food for food shelters (and whose recent cuts were felt by those trying to fight food insecurity), or $10 million for low income taxpayer clinics. These grants go largely to nonprofits who carry out a public purpose…. Our rich civil society has always been built alongside the state. Perhaps these are good programs or perhaps they are bad, but the sheer number of programs have nothing to do with the state degrading the individual through deadening bureaucracy…