A Critique Of Arthur Murray's Guaranteed Income For Every American

Posted: 6/12/2016

Trigger

Just read Arthur Murray’s A guaranteed income for every American  Replacing the welfare state with an annual grant is the best way to cope with a radically changing U.S. jobs market—and to revitalize America’s civic culture. It astounds me that the American Enterprise Institute is behind that. Apparently, this gentleman has written a monograph in 2006 on this topic.

Anyway, I am going to reflect on Mr. Murray’s arguments here, because I believe he is not the only proponent defending this baloney of universal, guaranteed income in similar ways.

A Critique

1. Mr. Murray extensively denies that he is not a Luddite. Au contraire, he is one. His argument rests on the fallacious claim that the impending technological revolution of robotics and AI is so extensive that it must be “this time is different”. That is a truly laughable argument. Every time a technology revolution has happened before this claim surely was raised by contemporaries of that time
2. To his credit, Mr. Murray describes in some detail how successful private, voluntary networks of charity and welfare were “displaced” by the New Deal and later the Great Society. Here is a salient quote (emphasis added):
   “A key feature of American exceptionalism has been the propensity of Americans to create voluntary organizations for dealing with local problems. Tocqueville was just one of the early European observers who marveled at this phenomenon in the 19th and early 20th centuries. By the time the New Deal began, American associations for providing mutual assistance and aiding the poor involved broad networks, engaging people from the top to the bottom of society, spontaneously formed by ordinary citizens.
   These groups provided sophisticated and effective social services and social insurance of every sort, not just in rural towns or small cities but also in the largest and most impersonal of megalopolises.”
3. So why does Mr. Murray then argue for a new, universal government program (i.e. guaranteed income for everyone) to displace all old, universal government programs (e.g. social security, medicare etc.)? His conclusion is flawed. Mr. Murray should have argued for a return to more private, voluntary charity and welfare to aid the poor or unfortunate.

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