Back in 2011, I linked to a simple chart that illustrated how handouts and subsidies create very high implicit marginal tax rates for low-income people and explained how “generosity” from the government leads to a tar-paper effect that limits upward mobility. Earlier…
Daily Analysis
The Fiscal Burden of the Welfare State: A Picture Says a Thousand Words
Here’s a remarkable chart showing that we spend about $60,000 on various welfare programs for every poor household in America. And what are we getting for that giant expenditure of money? Well, as this other chart shows, our progress in the fight against poverty came…
The Federalism Solution to the Medicaid Nightmare
This election season has seen lots of talk (and demagoguery) about whether investors, entrepreneurs, and small business owners should be hit with class-warfare tax policy. And there’s also been lots of debate about the best way of averting bankruptcy for Medicare,…
The Problem Is Federally Subsidized School Lunches, Not Michelle Obama’s Healthy Food Initiative
Some people are grumbling that the First Lady has taken the joy out of school lunches. She’s identified with the “Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010,” which uses federal funding to coerce schools into providing meals with fewer calories. But I think this criticism…
America Isn’t (Yet) a Divided Nation of “Makers” and “Takers,” but some on the Left Are Pushing Dependency as a Political Strategy
I’m part of a just-posted online Debate Club sponsored by U.S. News & World Report which asks “Is the United States a Nation of ‘Makers and Takers?’” My contribution to the discussion is basically a reworked version of what I wrote last week about Romney and the…
Does the $16 Trillion Debt Matter? A Remedial Lesson in Public Finance Economics for the GOP
Everyone has a cross to bear in life, some sort of burden or obligation, often self-imposed. For some inexplicable reason, I’ve decided that one of my responsibilities is to educate a backwards and primitive people who seem impervious to common sense, simple logic,…
Will American Exceptionalism Be Destroyed by the Entitlement Society?
I wrote a celebratory post last November about the dramatic difference between Americans and Europeans. There truly is American exceptionalism in that Europeans are much more likely to think it is government’s responsibility to provide the basics of life. Another poll…
Maybe It Is Possible to Reform Health Entitlements
I’m never guilty of being an optimist, but two items caught my attention today that suggest the tide may be turning on entitlement reform. We’ll start with something from the New York Times. Regular readers know that I’ve criticized that paper on a few occasions….
For Once, I Hope Paul Krugman Is Right
It’s not often that I read something by Paul Krugman and think, “Good point, I hope he’s correct.” After all, I had to correct Krugman’s inaccurate analysis of Estonia, and also point out the errors in what he wrote about the United Kingdom. And I also noted mistakes…
Shame on the Associated Press for Sloppy and/or Biased Reporting about Poverty
In a recent post about Brian Ross and the despicable behavior of ABC News, I included examples of what I categorized as deliberate and accidental media bias. Here’s a good (or perhaps I should say bad) example of accidental bias, demonstrating how statist premises get…