Thank you, Danny, Bev, and everyone for a very spirited and interesting discussion. I learned a lot. Thanks!

Not if you have to show serious efforts at school to maintain access to aid. If you get the aid for drinking and failing classes, then it is a bad thing. If you have to show serious efforts, then the aid can be a very positive incentive and opportunity. I support that.

Well said.

Equality does not come from handouts.

What would be the results if you gave free food to adults? The same. I doubt it.

Yes, the book has many excellent points about the need for a fairer tax policy and continued investment in opportunity through public education and other institutions. I am not convinced about the Basic Income.

YES — my children are lazy about homework unless we make sure they know there are penalties if they do not do it well.

I agree there is too much greed and there should be ethics about not always demanding more. That said, one person’s greed is another’s claim to merit. Every scholar I know thinks business CEOs get paid too much, but every scholar will ask for more pay when given the opportunity, even though scholars make much more than the average worker in most societies. Who is being greedy? Who is asking for merit? How do you separate the two?

I wish I could agree, but I think the evidence of human laziness when given basic sustenance for free is overwhelming. If humans were as naturally hard working as you think, then welfare policy would be a lot easier. What evidence do you have that people with a Basic Income will continue to work hard and seek jobs they love? Where has this happened?

Well said, Kelly. I agree 100% with your suggestions.

I come from a very modest family. I went to public schools until college. I went to college on scholarship. My family never had extra money beyond necessities.

For our last 30 minutes, Danny, I thought I would open another issue raised in your book. What is the appropriate role for education? How can we make education a better source of equality? What would education for equality look like?

I agree with everything you say when it applies to children. Every child should have access to enough income for an education, basic nutrition, health, and an opportunity in life. That is a worthwhile state investment. Beyond that, I am not sure. A Basic Income for adults will discourage work and innovation among some. We have seen this in so many societies. In the Soviet Union, for example, all adults had a Basic Income. What happened? Hundreds of thousands refused to work more, especially when they did not feel they would get rewarded for more work. Take a non-communist society today: Italy. The tens of thousands of workers on the public payroll have a Basic Income and they see no reason to work beyond the minimum. This is documented by scholars and I have seen it countless times in my conversations with these lazy public employees. How do we prevent these negative outcomes from a guaranteed Basic Income?

Good question about media, Ludwig. I had the same question in mind. What do you think of media portrayals of European crisis today, Danny?

Bad history, Danny. 1945-50 witnessed major labor unrest in Great Britain and continued war rationing. Britain had a lower standard of living in 1951 than West Germany. 1964-1970 was a period of major social unrest but some economic growth. 1974-1979 was a horrible economic period in Great Britain — declining standards of living and high unemployment. That period created Thatcher. Would you really want to advocate any of those 3 periods over present-day Britain? That is a very hard case to make.

You are reading the numbers wrong Ludwig. Military spending is 40-50% of government DISCRETIONARY spending. Most of the federal budget (more than 60%) is already sliced off for mandatory transfer payments (medicare, medicaid, social security) and interest on the debt. Military spending is part of what is left. Military spending in the US is much too high. If you took it all away and allocated to debt payments, however, it would not COME CLOSE to cover the sources of debt in the US — transfer payments and insufficient tax revenue.

I agree that the repeal of Glass-Steagall is a large cause of recent economic inequality and instability. I strongly favor a return to Glass-Steagall. It was one of the most sensible pieces of New Deal legislation.

I agree with the evidence of inequality in the US and its problems. That is not my argument. My point is that you have not offered a viable or better mechanism for redistributing income. You cannot just say that we are going to transfer 10% of GDP from the wealthiest to others. How are you going to make that happen? Even if you raise taxes sufficiently to make that happen, how can you be sure the fiscal revenues will be reallocated in that way? They never are and never have been in recent history. Huge tax redistributions in the last 100 years have, as I have said before, encouraged more social instability, more corruption, and more state tyranny. Even if you exclude the communist experiences, this was true throughout non-communist regimes, including 4th Republic France and Labour Britain. Redistribution in the name of equality is much more difficult and dangerous than it sounds at first glance. How would you do it and preserve democracy? How would you do it and assure that powerful political forces do not squander the money? The burden of historical experience demands concrete answers to these questions.

Even in the US, where we terribly over-spend on the military, it is less than 5% of GNP. Moving all that money to domestic benefits will not even cover the income for retirees. Where else is the money for the Basic Income going to come from? Higher taxes on the rich will not be enough, unless government forcibly takes some of their accumulated wealth. It was that logic that produced the most horrific regimes in the 20th century. Didn’t Lenin promise a basic income? Castro has done the same, and look at the repression of political freedom and the broad poverty in Cuba today. I find it quite alarming that you see Cuba as a model of sorts. For me, it is evidence of why talk of a Basic Income is even worse than the problems we already have today.

What would the Basic Income cover? Food and shelter? How would you assure that it does not become a disincentive for work and innovation? How would countries struggling to cover retirement costs alone find the capital to finance this?