Ms George was released in April, after 17 years, only because Barack Obama commuted her sentence.Under Mr Holder the federal mandatory-minimum regime has been softened for non-violent drug offences.
To some extent, then, even a libertarian state might have some government programs that resemble those we associate with a social minimum policy regime.
A first important set of arguments against work-conditionality appeals to problems of vulnerability and equity in the application of work conditions in a social minimum policy regime.
One response to the unfairness objection is to argue that some sort of work condition should be built into the social minimum policy regime.
The rich will allegedly work less hard, save less and be less entrepreneurial, because they are being more heavily taxed to pay for the social minimum policy regime.
However, this is just one view of the form that the social minimum policy regime should take, and it would be inappropriate to build this very specific view into our very definition of what a social minimum policy regime is, and thus, of what it means to enact a social minimum.
We define a "social minimum policy regime" as a set of policies and institutions that serve to secure reasonable access to this social minimum for all members of the society.
Critics might argue that the establishment of a social minimum policy regime creates distinctive problems of legitimacy for a society; and they might further argue that these problems make it undesirable, all things considered, to enact a social minimum.
The argument begins with the claim that if we make a shift from a free-market economic system to a system with a social minimum policy regime, we will reduce incentives to work, save and be entrepreneurial.
To be clear, by work-conditionality we mean conditions that link elements of the social minimum policy regime to some kind of work-related activity, such as active job search or retraining, not necessarily to immediate work.
One type of reply is to argue that while taxation to establish a social minimum policy regime might reduce one kind of liberty, it will promote another, more valuable kind of liberty.
