ABSTRACT
Robert J. Lampman is a Professor of Economics at the University of Wisconsin and a staff member of the Institute for Research on Poverty. For several years he has been exploring the possibilities and problems in using the federal individual income tax to increase the incomes of those persons classified as poor. This proposal is adapted from an earlier version, “Adding Guaranteed Income to the American System of Transfers,” which appeared in Social Action, November 1967. Mr. Lampman, along with Milton Friedman, James Tobin, and others, has been one of the principal advocates of negative income taxes. The Lampman proposals presented here are best understood as welfare reforms, the expansion of welfare coverage to the working poor. This incrementalism sharply distinguishes Lampman’s negative tax scheme from the anti-poverty negative tax plans of chapters 9 and 10 .
