(Also from Charles Murray: The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure
in American Life
Authors: Richard J. Hernstein, Charles Murray - January 1996)
ABOUT THE BOOK
FROM THE PUBLISHER
Charles Murray proposed a plan to eliminate all welfare transfer programs at
the federal, state, and local levels, and substitute a $10,000 annual cash
grant to everyone age 21 or older. Sound too good to be true? The book
describes the financial feasibility of the plan and its effects on
retirement, health care, poverty, marriage and family, work effort,
vocations, neighborhoods, and civil society.
In Our Hands will help us to
sweep out the intellectual cobwebs and come to grips with a truth that
somehow has been ignored in all the hand-wringing about budget deficits and
shortages of money: It is absurd that the government can spend so much money
on poverty, health care, and retirement, and accomplish so little. While an
obvious audience will be people on the right, libertarian and conservative,
In Our Hands will also appeal to those on the left who are serious about
getting more resources into the hands of the poor. It will also challenge
the left to confront its own rhetoric about the disadvantaged. If it is not
a good idea to give real resources and responsibility to them, why not?
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 The plan 8
2 Basic finances 15
3 Retirement 24
4 Health care 37
5 Poverty 52
6 The underclass 61
7 Work disincentives 72
8 The pursuit of happiness in advanced societies 82
9 Vocation 95
10 Marriage 101
11 Community 111
12 Conclusion 125
App. A The programs to be eliminated 130
App. B Computation of budget projections 140
App. C Tax rates and after-tax income under the current system and the plan
148
App. D Preliminary thoughts about political feasibility and transition costs
157
App. E Assumptions about the costs of the current system versus the costs of
the plan