{"by":"DabAsteroid","dead":true,"id":417604,"parent":417593,"text":"Direct payment like you're advocating is a political non-starter.

It is the only non-distorting form of wefare possible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Income

taxpayers don't like the idea that their money could be spent on [just] anything

What if no one paid or owed discrete taxes? In other words, what if there were no taxes on income or consumption?

http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/ConsumptionTax.html

The political wrangling obscured the real issues underlying a question that has occupied economists and tax experts for many years—whether individuals should pay any taxes at all on capital income. Strange as it may sound, most economists would agree that having zero taxes on capital income is theoretically the best thing to do.

http://www.irefeurope.org/col_docs/doc_26_fr.pdf

Several studies even demonstrate that, from the point of view of maximizing economic growth, the long-run optimal taxation is zero. Milesi-Ferretti and Roubini (1994), for instance, show that under very general assumptions the optimal tax burden on labour and capital income is zero. Jones, Manuelli and Rossi (1993b) and Bull (1993) add that even consumption taxes ought to be equal to zero ... no such thing as a progressive tax system should be allowed to exist. More precisely, as Sir Mirrlees (1971) showed, the marginal tax rate at the highest level of income should be zero. And finally, in our eyes, there should be no capital income tax.","time":1230926029,"type":"comment"}