Protection From What We Want

WASHINGTON-Charles Murray, who's the sort of big-thinking think-tank scholar that Washington's power elite listens to, has a new plan to reduce poverty, encourage work, fortify marriages, insure the uninsured, "replace the welfare state" - AND save money in the long run. I told you he was a big thinker.

Unfortunately, his elegantly crafted and richly researched proposal, published by the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) as "In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State," ultimately reminds me of H.L. Mencken's observation: "For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong."

In short, one headline called Murray's plan "The $10,000 Solution." He proposes to replace almost every federal social program-Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and the rest-with a $10,000 annual cash grant to every American over 21 and not in prison. Those of us who make more than $25,000 would be taxed back to $5,000, but every adult not in prison would be included.

It's an attractive idea, if it worked, because Murray's plan would simplify the government's enormous menu of social spending in the way that the "flat tax," another conservative fantasy, would simplify the revenue-gathering process that gives us headaches every April 15.

But, I, for one, also was reminded of a skit on comedian Dave Chappelle's old Comedy Central show in which a breaking news report announces that the government finally is distributing cash payments to black Americans as reparations for slavery:

News Reporter: "So, what do you plan to spend your money on?"

Young Black Man: "I'm going to re-invest it in the community."

News Reporter: "Well, that's.."

Young Black Man (interrupting): "Psyche! I'm gonna spend it before y'all (white people) change yo minds!"

In other words, racial angle aside, if everybody received $10,000 under Murray's plan, much of the money undoubtedly would wind up in the pockets of lottery ticket vendors, liquor stores, neighborhood drug dealers and other temptations that help make some people poorer. That's their problem, says Murray, a self-described libertarian, who simply wants to "let people run their own lives." Let the magic of the marketplace, freed from government intrusion, create the incentives that will induce all but a negligible fraction of people to make good choices, he says.

But will that fraction be substantially less than those who make bad choices now? As with any untested plan, except in small studies like those that Murray cites, that's a risk we would have to take.

Yet, big risks like that explain why "the welfare state" has endured, despite the right's relentless bumper-sticker assaults. Americans are reluctant even to mend it, let alone end it. Look at last year's widespread rejection of President Bush's proposal to partially privatize Social Security.

One might similarly ask whether Murray's free-market approach actually would put the brakes on health care inflation through competition, as he hopes. Or whether Americans really want to spend time arguing costs with health care insurers when government bureaucrats could do a better job of it.

Some conservatives have misgivings, too. In a panel discussion at AEI, the Heritage Foundation's Robert Rector, who helped author the 1996 welfare reform law, noted that Murray's plan would wipe away that law's most significant feature: its requirement that able-bodied recipients of government aid provide some minimal work in return, which deters dependency and dysfunctional behavior. Murray shrugged off that critique. "I don't want a bureaucrat to deal with dysfunctional behavior," he said. "I want neighbors or friends or strangers who are in a position to help." Social engineering, anyone?

Nevertheless, I give Murray credit. Even when I disagree with him, he often breaks the ice around issues that deserve deeper debate. "Losing Ground," his 1984 critique of welfare programs, fueled the Reagan-era debate that produced Bill Clinton's 1992 promise to "end welfare as we know it" and the stiff work requirements in the bipartisan welfare reform act of 1996. Thanks to the decade's economic boom, welfare reform turned out to be a bigger success than even many of its supporters expected at nudging recipients from welfare rolls to payrolls.

In 1994, Murray's incendiary best-seller "The Bell Curve," co-authored with the late Richard Herrnstein (cq), tried to revive the widely discredited notion that differences in income might be determined at birth by inherited human differences. Other scholars shredded the book's almost willful shortchanging of the role played by differences in social environment. Yet, happily, the controversy led to new and long-overdue scholarly inquiry into the true reasons and possible remedies for differences in the academic performance of blacks, whites, Hispanics and Asians.

Similarly, his latest work could do a great public service if it stirs new efforts to replace cumbersome bureaucracy with something neater and simpler - and not wrong!