Time To Think About The Welfare State

Today in the WSJ , American Enterprise Institute writer Charles Murray has a short publication on "A Plan to Replace the Welfare State".
I love the idea of limited government and lowered spending for the entitlement programs that the government runs, this piece has some great ideas that will never be accepted!
They call it THE PLAN. Not the most ambitious name for a total reworking of the current Social Security and Health Care Lobby system that we have now, or that some want us to have down the road, but the name is not the important part.
It all starts with this point:

Instead of sending taxes to Washington, straining them through bureaucracies and converting what remains into a muddle of services, subsidies, in-kind support and cash hedged with restrictions and exceptions, just collect the taxes, divide them up, and send the money back in cash grants to all American adults. Make the grant large enough so that the poor won't be poor, everyone will have enough for a comfortable retirement, and everyone will be able to afford health care. We're rich enough to do it.

Mr Murray then goes thru a series of steps of what to do with those grants to ensure a comfortable retirement, good heath care benefits and then any other things that a person could use the grants for.
The focus of the piece besides getting a debate going on entitlements, is I think to get a debate going on personal accountability.
See these great lines:

The Plan confers personal accountability whether the recipient wants it or not
The Plan confers responsibility for dealing with human needs on all of us, whether we want it or not.

Please read and discuss amongst yourselves.