WI GMI instead of Social Security?

Supposing, circa 1935, FDR pushed a form of Basic Income* instead of a Social Security pension? Like the SSA that passed OTL, it can be a limited program that grows over time.

What other mechanism could he use? How does this change affect how the US welfare state develops, and what butterflies could we see beyond that?

*possibly through a Negative Income Tax or an EITC/unemployment-insurance combo, or some other mechanism
 
Something like a citizen's dividend has been proposed before---Charles Murray proposed one that would be on the order of 10k per citizen over a certain age per year that would replace pretty much all entitlement and social programs (SS, Welfare, WIC, Food Stamps, Medicare/Medicaid, etc), and he's hardly a liberal. The biggest effect of a program like that would be it would greatly reduce the number of government employees, because a non-means tested program like that one would just require 20 or so electronic banking people to administrate.
 
Generational transfers are generally an easier sell politically than broad-based anti-poverty programs. SSI was deliberately structured to superficially resemble a private pension program, with a payroll deduction and a benefits formula based on how much you paid into it. FDR specifically wanted the payroll tax as a separate, explicit, broad-based tax so that people would see it as something they'd paid into and earned so they'd oppose future attempts to cut or repeal the program, and he specifically wanted the payroll tax to max out at a certain income level to reduce the level (real and perceived) of redistribution in the program so the upper-middle class wouldn't resent it.

As a generational transfer, particularly with a pay-as-you-go mechanism (where current revenue pays benefits rather than being invested to pay future benefits like a private pension program; the SSI trust fund wasn't established until 1977), it was also initially very cheap relative to the perceived level of benefits: only retirees who'd paid the payroll tax were eligible, and those who'd paid the payroll tax for less than a certain lenght of time (five years?) had their benefits prorated, and it took years for the base of beneficiaries to build up to an expensive level. Meanwhile, people approaching retirement age were looking forward to their promised benefits from day 1 of the program and credited FDR for establishing the program.

FDR did have anti-poverty programs (WPA, TVA, AAA, NIRA, etc), but most of them were structured in such a way as both to give him and his Congressional allies flexibility in directing the benefits for political purposes and making sure the beneficiaries knew who they had to thank for their money (not a specific slight against FDR; this is a widespread Stupid Politician Trick, especially in that era, and both parties have been guilty of similar things when they've had the opportunity), and they were generally structured as infrastructure, public works, and economic rationalization (central planning, rationing, and price controls were at the time widely believed to be more efficient than a lightly-regulated market economy) projects that could be argued were real jobs doing things that benefited taxpayers as well as the direct recipients of federal money, rather than being undisguised and unmitigated handouts (which tend to be unpopular, especially when taxes are higher than people are used to (some the largest tax increases in US history had passed under Hoover's administration, and FDR raised taxes further) and when the transfer programs aren't things that people are used to).

Then there's the effect on unemployment. SSI, in the short term at least, reduces unemployment by encouraging people to retire earlier and leave the job market. A Basic Income program would also give people marginally in the job market an incentive to stop looking for work, but it would do so in a way that looks bad (discouraged workers resigned to living off the dole) rather than good (people able to afford a comfortable retirement after a lifetime of hard work).

If FDR decided to pursue a Basic Income program instead of SSI, or indeed as a replacement for the bulk of the New Deal, he probably could have gotten it passed into law. However, it would have been much less popular than SSI, perhaps to the point that a repeal a few years down the road would be plausible, and if it had also replaced the WPA, TVA, and similar programs, it would have also cost him a lot of his ability to use New Deal money to reward his political allies, thus reducing his political clout significantly.

In short, if you want an Alf Landon or Wendell Wilikie Presidency, this is probably one of the better PODs to use to achieve it.
 
You might be able to get it included in the Progressive movement's agenda early on when the federal government was running large surpluses due to high protective tariffs. The revenue's already there for at least a basic program, the redistributive aspects aspects of the proposal would appeal to Progressives, the messaging could neatly piggy-back on Bryan's populist appeal against Northeastern moneyed interests, and the relative lack of space for corruption and pork-barrel allocation would be seen as a feature not a bug by the many Progressives of that era motivated by opposition to the corruption of the Gilded Era.

Maybe have the Georgist movement catch on more in America than it did in OTL? Although Georgism seems to have been more influential in British politics (being a major intellectual influence for the People's Budget), Henry George was American and was involved in Progressive politics (running for Mayor of New York in 1886 on a Labor ticket and coming in second ahead of Theodore Roosevelt), so there's any number of ways we could probably broaden his appeal and influence.

One possibility would be to have George and TR agree that one of them should drop out of the 1886 mayoral race and support the other (the combined ticket would likely win, since they got nearly 60% of the vote between the two of them), raising George's profile (especially if he's the one to stay in the race) and tying him to TR. If TR still becomes President, he may pick up on some Georgist policies, including a GMI.

Another possibility would be simply to improve George's health so he doesn't die of a stroke in 1897 and instead stays healthy and politically-active well into his later years, and have his extended political career have him continue to be pushed out of the Independent Labor/Socialist movement and back towards mainstream Progressivism because of his vehement opposition to Marxism, so he winds up either as part of the Bryan campaign in 1900 (eventually rising in Democratic politics to become an economic advisor to Woodrow Wilson, who then institutes a GMI policy on his way out of office, as a reaction to the depression of 1920) or winds up as part of the Progressive Republican movement and becomes an influence for the Bull Moose party. In the latter case (or if there's instead a later POD that doesn't involve Henry George), we may see Herbert Hoover institute the early GMI as part of his reaction to the Great Depression (perhaps packaging it with the Smoot-Hawley tariff), then have FDR expand it.

Hoover's probably the best choice for butterfly control. Wilson or TR would happen so far in advance of the FDR administration, especially if you go with the 1886 POD, that a host of other things are likely to change as well.
 
Much obliged :D So if Hoover lays the groundwork, and FDR expands on it, a GMI measure could survive long term, right? In that case, does anyone have any ideas for the butterflies following this...
 
Generational transfers are generally an easier sell politically than broad-based anti-poverty programs. SSI was deliberately structured to superficially resemble a private pension program, with a payroll deduction and a benefits formula based on how much you paid into it. FDR specifically wanted the payroll tax as a separate, explicit, broad-based tax so that people would see it as something they'd paid into and earned so they'd oppose future attempts to cut or repeal the program, and he specifically wanted the payroll tax to max out at a certain income level to reduce the level (real and perceived) of redistribution in the program so the upper-middle class wouldn't resent it.

As a generational transfer, particularly with a pay-as-you-go mechanism (where current revenue pays benefits rather than being invested to pay future benefits like a private pension program; the SSI trust fund wasn't established until 1977), it was also initially very cheap relative to the perceived level of benefits: only retirees who'd paid the payroll tax were eligible, and those who'd paid the payroll tax for less than a certain lenght of time (five years?) had their benefits prorated, and it took years for the base of beneficiaries to build up to an expensive level. Meanwhile, people approaching retirement age were looking forward to their promised benefits from day 1 of the program and credited FDR for establishing the program.

FDR did have anti-poverty programs (WPA, TVA, AAA, NIRA, etc), but most of them were structured in such a way as both to give him and his Congressional allies flexibility in directing the benefits for political purposes and making sure the beneficiaries knew who they had to thank for their money (not a specific slight against FDR; this is a widespread Stupid Politician Trick, especially in that era, and both parties have been guilty of similar things when they've had the opportunity), and they were generally structured as infrastructure, public works, and economic rationalization (central planning, rationing, and price controls were at the time widely believed to be more efficient than a lightly-regulated market economy) projects that could be argued were real jobs doing things that benefited taxpayers as well as the direct recipients of federal money, rather than being undisguised and unmitigated handouts (which tend to be unpopular, especially when taxes are higher than people are used to (some the largest tax increases in US history had passed under Hoover's administration, and FDR raised taxes further) and when the transfer programs aren't things that people are used to).

Then there's the effect on unemployment. SSI, in the short term at least, reduces unemployment by encouraging people to retire earlier and leave the job market. A Basic Income program would also give people marginally in the job market an incentive to stop looking for work, but it would do so in a way that looks bad (discouraged workers resigned to living off the dole) rather than good (people able to afford a comfortable retirement after a lifetime of hard work).

Excellent points. My understanding is, that many of the same concerns (in particular a desire to avoid the 'money for nothing' accusation) led to Nixon making so many changes to Milton's Friedman's Negative Income Tax proposal in the 1970's, that Friedman ended up opposing it.
 
Excellent points. My understanding is, that many of the same concerns (in particular a desire to avoid the 'money for nothing' accusation) led to Nixon making so many changes to Milton's Friedman's Negative Income Tax proposal in the 1970's, that Friedman ended up opposing it.

Well that, and AIUI, Milton was pretty insistent that the NIT outright replace the welfare state...
 
Well that, and AIUI, Milton was pretty insistent that the NIT outright replace the welfare state...

That's my understanding as well. The standard libertarian argument for a NIT is that it's less bad than the policies it'd be replacing, providing more benefit to the recipients at less cost to taxpayers and less distortion of incentives. It's a compromise proposal, not a first-choice proposal, and using it to supplement medicaid, welfare, food stamps, section 8, etc rather than replace them would defeat the purpose.
 
If there's a GMI introduced instead of social security, then it might butterfly away minimum wage laws in the U.S.
 
Top