In the new In Our Hands, libertarian social scientist Charles Murray sets forth a radical thought experiment. The U.S. ends welfare – and replaces it with a $10,000 annual grant to every American 21 or older.Social Security? Gone. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families? No more. Farm subsidies? Adios.
Everyone would have to spend $3,000 on health care, ending the current crisis. And lawmakers could earmark another $2,000 for retirement savings, making sure the elderly don't starve.
Murray argues persuasively that the system is financially feasible (indeed, cheaper as of 2011 if richer citizens receive less money) and could have beneficial social ramifications. But In Our Hands has numerous problems. Murray fails to detail why the current system is so terrible to begin with, and many of "The Plan's" specifics are discomfiting to say the least.
For two and a half decades Murray has chronicled the evils of the welfare state, arguing it creates dependency by rewarding idleness and irresponsible childbearing. 1984's Losing Ground set off a wave of scholarship and debate that culminated in the 1996 welfare reform. In 1999 the free online paper "The Underclass Revisited" showed that, despite the reform, poverty-reinforcing behaviors were alive and well in the U.S.
Yet none of these insights are included in the 127-page In Our Hands – the work seems to assume that readers accept Murray's previous arguments, or at least believe the current system will go bankrupt without a severe overhaul. An update of "The Underclass Revisited" would have required little extra research, added a few pages and given analysts more to talk about.
Most of all, it would have taken In Our Hands out of the hypothetical and into the real world. Murray himself concedes that "The Plan" won't be politically feasible for years.
Taking the book at face value, however, some important problems remain. The first is Murray's bizarre views about education.
He repeatedly contends that time away from both work and school is a good thing, though he looks down on that when the people sitting around all day are poor. The $10,000 grant, he points out, would allow some better-off students to study abroad or take time off without running into financial trouble. Most would agree this is a pretty benign effect of the proposal.
But Murray argues it's a positively good thing for students to wait between high school and college, and between college and a career. Indeed he tries to persuade his own children to put off university – he reveals in a footnote that, fortunately, they've ignored him so far.
Encouraging the rich to subsidize their children's laziness, though, is a minor issue compared to what "The Plan" would do to education funding. The proposal eliminates all aid to students. Many would have to wait until the age of 21, when the grant begins, to go to college.
It's a good point that, under the current system, waitresses and construction workers pay taxes that fund Pell Grants. These grants' recipients go on to make considerably more money than they would have otherwise (and more than the waitresses and construction workers), yet are not expected to repay the subsidy.
But each student affected by Murray's idea would lose three years in a college graduate-level job. He'd end up with less money, less fulfillment and something like 6,000 hours spent on a job that doesn't utilize his skills.
What's more unnerving is that there's an obvious solution: Start the grant at age 18 for those attending college, reducing future grants until the amount is paid back with interest.
A second wrongheaded suggestion is a reworking of an idea that appeared in Murray's The Bell Curve. He contends that unmarried fathers should have neither rights nor responsibilities with regard to children. (Oddly enough, in another chapter Murray touts the ability to take child support from deadbeat dads' annual grants as a helpful feature of "The Plan.") With both "The Plan" and this law for unmarried fathers in place, a woman would have to marry before accessing the man's annual $10,000.
In a social engineering sense, Murray is right. There was a lot less illegitimacy when women faced the entire burden – it made sense for females to secure commitment before getting pregnant, where now they can count on child support checks and sometimes government help. Child support deters men to some degree, but men by and large don't think with the heads on their shoulders.
The bottom line is that it's unfair to punish a mother and child for the sins of a mother and father. Murray will offend much of his target audience by suggesting otherwise.
Finally, In Our Hands is premised on ripping the Constitution to shreds. The U.S.' founding document gave wide latitude to states while severely limiting the federal government. "The Plan" does the exact opposite, using an Amendment to end states' welfare programs while giving the feds control over all income redistribution.
In Our Hands is a valuable contribution from one of today's most important social scientists. But it falls far, far short of what it could be.
