(02-10-2018 01:10 PM)Old Dominion Wrote:  I think I characterized it correctly.
"Set the income floor high enough to support subsistence but low enough that getting a job is highly incentivized." Seems you also tied in some form of health care and tax incentives. If dems could do this, they would. Repubs would blow a gasket. You may be more, shall I say, progressive than you think. God Forbid!

Nope, you are misunderstanding something. The democrats would want to set such an income at $20,000-$30,000 or more, plus single payer health care, which would disincentivize working for many. Plus at that level either you have to make it go away at some point, thus having "poverty trap" impacts, or we can't afford it as a society and economy. This concept is more around $8,000 or so plus Bismarck health care, so getting a job is still attractive.

Actually this--in the form of the Boortz-Linder prebate/prefund--is part of the Fair Tax proposal that is almost exclusively a libertarian/republican concept. And it essentially revives the negative income tax proposal by Milton Friedman, who is also associated with classical liberal (libertarian) principles. I have not heard or read of a single democrat championing it, although I'm sure that among millions there may be one somewhere.