How Not to Fix Entitlements
Society and civilization grow and prosper as we invent and produce goods and services. This is optimized by everyone being incented to work and contribute. Society has essentially established limits on how much work might be required (i.e. 40 hour work week.) And there are arguments that as society progresses maybe this requirement should be reduced. But for now that is the expectation.
Capitalism has been found to be the most efficient way to allocate limited resources to meet unlimited demands. But one weakness of capitalism is how to take care of unlucky people, people that are incapable of working.
If you believe, like I do, that society needs to find a way to help unlucky people recognize it is difficult to design a system to help unlucky people knowing that there are “lazy” people who will take advantage of it.
One idea has been a guaranteed universal income where people would receive a fixed dollar amount regardless of their income. A recent well designed study showed that a $1,000 per month guaranteed income resulted in less workers, working less and playing more.
Our current system actually disincents people in the lower income bracket by having implicit tax rates over 100%. People loose more benefits than they gain by making more money.
my intuition is that society should guarantee a minimalistic amount of food, shelter (safe army barracks), and clothing, adequate health care and good education to unlucky people through vouchers This would maximize the incentive to work and minimize the waste and corruption.