TOP DRAWER BOOK REVIEW
by
HL Carpenter

In Our Hands
by Charles Murray
ISBN 0-8447-4223-6
214 pages; hardcover; $20.00
The AEI Press, Washington, DC, 2006

Forget tinkering with Social Security and Medicare. Author Charles Murray wants to eliminate those programs, along with a whole list of others. In their place, he proposes the government give each American over age 21 a guaranteed minimum income of $10,000 per year.

In Our Hands examines the effect of what Mr. Murray calls “the plan” on retirement, poverty, health care, marriage and the incentive to work. Overall, his conclusion is that the plan will cost less than current programs, while having negligible negative effects.

If you think the plan is simply an exchange of one set of welfare programs for another, you’re on the right track. The end result is the system we have today: Government collecting taxes from some and re-distributing the money to others. Mr. Murray does say he’d prefer to leave those tax dollars with the people who pay them and get the government out of the picture. However, he feels pursuing his ideal is a lost cause. In Our Hands is his compromise.

Mr. Murray acknowledges the chances of enacting the plan are remote, for which truth you may be grateful or dismayed. But either reaction is okay, because the real purpose of In Our Hands and other books like it is to promote discussion of solutions and ideas that look beyond what currently exists. You don’t have to agree with the plan, just realize it sometimes makes more sense to move in a new direction instead of trying to fix what’s broken. Ultimately, that may be the best plan of all. It’s certainly one that’s in our hands.

Review originally published June 2006.