The latest video from our Economics 101 Series tackles poverty, an issue frequently used to pull heart-strings in support of big government policies. But as the video shows, big government redistribution schemes are not making the problem better, and are likely making…
During his 1976 campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, Ronald Reagan popularized the notion of “welfare queens” who bilked redistribution programs for thousands of dollars. It has since become non-PC to use such a term, but that’s never stopped me. Here’s a…
The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities is a left-wing group in Washington that advocates for bigger government and higher taxes. In an effort to promote more redistribution, they recently put together a map showing how welfare benefits varied by state. We’re…
The Census Bureau has just released the 2010 poverty numbers, and the new data is terrible. There are now a record number of poor people in America, and the poverty rate has jumped to 15.1 percent. But I don’t really blame President Obama for these grim numbers. Yes,…
Governor Rick Perry of Texas is being attacked by two rivals in the GOP presidential race. His sin, if you can believe it, is that he told the truth (as acknowledged by everyone from Paul Krugman to Milton Friedman) about Social Security being a Ponzi scheme. Here’s…
The editors at Bloomberg have decided that condemning younger workers to a more dismal future is the best way to deal with the Social Security program’s giant long-run shortfall. They want workers to pay higher taxes to prop up the bankrupt system. And, in exchange…
Last week, I wrote about an utterly reprehensible welfare mom in the United Kingdom who had the gall to blame the government when one of her 11 kids was arrested for rioting. Surely, I thought, she was the perfect symbol of the moral depravity caused by welfare state…
Every so often, I can’t resist condemning someone for grossly immoral behavior. I beat up on Robert Murphy for stealing the value of someone else’s property. I attacked Olga Stefou for symbolizing the looter-class mentality of Greece. And I mocked Michael Wolfensohn…
It was a strange experience to read the comments and emails generated by yesterday’s post on the “Obama downgrade.” Democrats and liberals were upset that I blamed Obama for the downgrade, as you might expect. Republicans and conservatives, however, were agitated that…
As the national debate shifts away from the immediate issues surrounding the debt ceiling, members of Congress should focus now on the fundamental purpose of government in a free society. Current excesses in federal spending have resulted largely due to the continued…