Thanks for exhausting your intellectual capital with that reply, chooch.
I'm for trying anything to see if it works. That said, I didn't see much evidence to suggest it would work. I do appreciate the administrative convenience of a single, uniform payment for everyone (although decreasing bureaucracy also means killing jobs, i.e. political poison). However, the $700/mo per capita figure that the U.S. spends on "entitlements" includes everything--including Medicare and Social Security. Unless we are willing to more than double our spending on entitlement programs, it's difficult to ever imagine the political capital to make this a reality. Furthermore, it would probably be unconstitutional in many cases, particularly with respect to trust programs like social security. Not to mention, the increased tax burden would be epochal. The cited studies favorably mention labor participation without mentioning tax revenues from the study groups. I'm not trying to be unduly skeptical, but is this something more than the convulsing corpse of a small-but-vocal body of socialist utopians?
