This isn’t a video produced by an anti-welfare group. It’s not even from the United States. Instead, you’re looking at a straight news clip from England that unintentionally offers a very powerful example of how welfare saps initiative, creates dependency, subsidizes…
Daily Analysis
France Increases Retirement Age to 62, Solves 1.94 Percent of Its Fiscal Problem
I’m just making up the 1.94 percent number, but the International Herald Tribune reported last year that unfunded liabilities in France are nearly 550 percent of GDP. The news reports don’t include any estimates of what Sarkozy’s reform will mean, but I would be…
Mitch Daniels Would Be a Terrible President
I’m mystified that some conservatives and libertarians are sympathetic to the idea that Mitch Daniels, the governor of Indiana, might be a good candidate in 2012. The main challenge for our nation is the growing burden of government, so it seems that this would…
More than Two-to-One Support for Personal Retirement Accounts
I am pleasantly shocked to see that a healthy majority of respondents favor partial privatization of Social Security. I knew support was reasonably strong several years ago, but I feared that the financial crisis would have made Americans more leery of financial…
Does the War on Poverty Fight Destitution or Subsidize It?
The Census Bureau will be releasing new poverty-rate numbers on Thursday and the numbers are expected to show a big move in the wrong direction. Much of the coverage will be on how much the poverty rate increases, with 15 percent being a likely amount according to…
Will Entitlements, Handouts, and other Government Programs Turn America into a Nation of Sheep?
If you saw the Wall-E movie, you may remember how people morphed into helpless blobs because all their needs were being fulfilled by something called BNL. I realize I’m a quirky libertarian, but the movie made me think about how excessive government is doing something…
Smoke for the Motherland
Excise taxes, where government taxes the sale of particular goods, are usually levied with the excuse that consumption of a good or engagement in a certain activity is harmful for individuals. If this were actually true, you’d expect government bureaucrats to…
More Arguments Against a Value-Added Tax
The biggest long-term threat to fiscal responsibility is a value-added tax, as I’ve explained here, here, here, here, and here. So I’m delighted to see a growing amount of research showing that a VAT is bad news. Jim Powell has an excellent column at Investor’s…
Record Levels of Dependency Are Nothing to Celebrate
One of the big problems with statists is that they define compassion incorrectly. They think they are being compassionate when they take other people’s money and give it to somebody that they define as being less fortunate. But genuine compassion occurs when you spend…
Chile’s Private Social Security System a Big Success
Unlike the United States and most European nations, Chile does not face a long-term Social Security crisis. This is because lawmakers shifted to a system of personal accounts almost 30 years ago. As a result, Chile’s economy is much stronger, the financial system is…