What "current results" are you referring to? No, people 50+ years ago weren't arguing that cliffs can lead to disincentives, they were arguing that the whole system is "socialism" and bad - something that has been repeatedly disproven.
There are few things more evil in our society than the breed of conservative that will talk about how their family needed social welfare growing up to survive, how it worked and they did survive, but how "ashamed" they feel so they thing we should tear everything down and remove the ladder now that they've climbed it.
> What "current results" are you referring to? No, people 50+ years ago weren't arguing that cliffs can lead to disincentives, they were arguing that the whole system is "socialism" and bad - something that has been repeatedly disproven.
In fact, we have disincentives like that because they were arguing that having a flat benefit for everyone would be socialism.
If you don't reduce benefit with income level, these disincentives vanishes and that's how all post-war systems worked in Europe (can't talk about the US) before the neoliberal crew started dismantling everything in the name of “reducing public spendings” for greater economic efficiency.
A flat benefit for everyone that doesn't reduce with income level would be universal basic income, which has many supporters in theory, but has never been implemented in practice so far, not even in the most socialist countries of the 20th century...
No it's not. Not all benefit is “income” and not all such income is universal. And it also has nothing to do with socialism (socialism is about forbidding the private property of the means of production! Please stop calling every kind of public intervention “socialism”, that's as ridiculous as calling all Republicans “fascists”).
For the non-income version see countries with free schools or free hospital, and for an example of an income benefit see the French Allocation familiales, which until 2015 were given to every family with 2 child or more no matter the parents income.
There were plenty of such systems, and some of them still exist (AFAIK the US social security is one of those, you don't lose access to the benefits even if you're rich)
Ok, those are valid examples (also, how about free roads for everyone? Everyone seems to take that for granted and wouldn't dream about calling it "socialist"), but in your original post you wrote about "a flat benefit for everyone" that doesn't reduce with income level, and the examples you gave are either non-income or not for everyone (e.g. not for families with less than two children, not for people who didn't pay social security taxes for at least 10 years etc.).
> Ok, those are valid examples (also, how about free roads for everyone? Everyone seems to take that for granted and wouldn't dream about calling it "socialist")
This exactly.
> but in your original post you wrote about "a flat benefit for everyone" that doesn't reduce with income level
Yeah, my writing was confusing. By “for everyone” I meant “no matter the income”, not that we should give children's allowance to single adults. Just that we stop index these things on income. By the way I also think we should give more in nature (“the medical operation is free”), and less in cash, but that's independent.
There are few things more evil in our society than the breed of conservative that will talk about how their family needed social welfare growing up to survive, how it worked and they did survive, but how "ashamed" they feel so they thing we should tear everything down and remove the ladder now that they've climbed it.