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In Our Hands: A plan to replace the welfare state
By Staff Writer
Posted: April 18, 2006
Charles Murray is the W. H. Brady Scholar in Culture and Freedom at
the American Enterprise Institute. In In Our Hands, he offers a plan
that would eliminate all income transfer programs at the federal, state,
and local levels—including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid,
welfare, and corporate subsidies—and would substitute an annual
cash grant of $10,000 for life, beginning at age twenty-one.
Murray argues that “the Plan” would end poverty, allow all Americans
access to health care, and empower people to control their own lives.
Murray’s book describes the financial feasibility of his ideas and their
effect on retirement, health care, poverty, marriage and family, work,
neighborhoods, and the larger civil society.
In his seminal 1984 book Losing Ground, Murray sparked national
debate by arguing that the social programs of the Great Society not
only failed to help the poor and disadvantaged, but also made things
worse. Now, Murray has written a book that is, in his own words,
“not a book about poverty. It’s about building a society in which people
can run their own lives.”
Once again, Charles Murray is ahead of his time:
Today, about 36 million people are below the poverty line. Under the
Plan, all of them would have the resources to escape poverty.
Today, a twenty-one-year-old in a low-income job can expect an
annual pension of about $11,000 from Social Security when he retires.
Under the Plan he can expect an annual pension of about $34,000 by
investing in a simple indexed mutual fund.
Today, about 45 million Americans have no health insurance. Under
the Plan, all Americans could have access to good health care at far
less than insurance costs now.
Murray’s Plan offers a radical alternative to the problems of poverty in
America. The Plan does not try to stage-manage lives with social
services or try to change behavior with exhortations. “The Plan says
just one thing to people who have never had reason to believe it
before,” Murray writes. “‘Your future is in your hands.’ And it is the truth.”
In Our Hands also discusses the effect of the Plan on the majority of
Americans who are not poor. “The real problem advanced societies
face,” Murray writes, “has nothing to do with poverty, retirement, health
care, or the underclass. The real problem is how to live meaningful
lives in an age of plenty and security.”
The welfare state has become a dead end, stripping life of the choices
and responsibilities that give human existence weight and
consequence. The Plan returns control over these choices and
responsibilities to individuals, families, and communities, with the
prospect of revitalizing civil society in ways that can do as much to
enrich American life as the Plan’s effects on the poor.
Radical solutions take time to catch on. In Our Hands is intended to
spark a dialogue about real solutions to entitlement problems that
have been decades in the making.
### ### ###
In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State
Author: Charles Murray
Publisher: AEI Press, Washington
visit: www.aei.org
By Staff Writer
Posted: April 18, 2006
Charles Murray is the W. H. Brady Scholar in Culture and Freedom at
the American Enterprise Institute. In In Our Hands, he offers a plan
that would eliminate all income transfer programs at the federal, state,
and local levels—including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid,
welfare, and corporate subsidies—and would substitute an annual
cash grant of $10,000 for life, beginning at age twenty-one.
Murray argues that “the Plan” would end poverty, allow all Americans
access to health care, and empower people to control their own lives.
Murray’s book describes the financial feasibility of his ideas and their
effect on retirement, health care, poverty, marriage and family, work,
neighborhoods, and the larger civil society.
In his seminal 1984 book Losing Ground, Murray sparked national
debate by arguing that the social programs of the Great Society not
only failed to help the poor and disadvantaged, but also made things
worse. Now, Murray has written a book that is, in his own words,
“not a book about poverty. It’s about building a society in which people
can run their own lives.”
Once again, Charles Murray is ahead of his time:
Today, about 36 million people are below the poverty line. Under the
Plan, all of them would have the resources to escape poverty.
Today, a twenty-one-year-old in a low-income job can expect an
annual pension of about $11,000 from Social Security when he retires.
Under the Plan he can expect an annual pension of about $34,000 by
investing in a simple indexed mutual fund.
Today, about 45 million Americans have no health insurance. Under
the Plan, all Americans could have access to good health care at far
less than insurance costs now.
Murray’s Plan offers a radical alternative to the problems of poverty in
America. The Plan does not try to stage-manage lives with social
services or try to change behavior with exhortations. “The Plan says
just one thing to people who have never had reason to believe it
before,” Murray writes. “‘Your future is in your hands.’ And it is the truth.”
In Our Hands also discusses the effect of the Plan on the majority of
Americans who are not poor. “The real problem advanced societies
face,” Murray writes, “has nothing to do with poverty, retirement, health
care, or the underclass. The real problem is how to live meaningful
lives in an age of plenty and security.”
The welfare state has become a dead end, stripping life of the choices
and responsibilities that give human existence weight and
consequence. The Plan returns control over these choices and
responsibilities to individuals, families, and communities, with the
prospect of revitalizing civil society in ways that can do as much to
enrich American life as the Plan’s effects on the poor.
Radical solutions take time to catch on. In Our Hands is intended to
spark a dialogue about real solutions to entitlement problems that
have been decades in the making.
### ### ###
In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State
Author: Charles Murray
Publisher: AEI Press, Washington
visit: www.aei.org
| (c) 2006 New Criterion Foundation, London |