by Dan Mitchell | Mar 20, 2016 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending, Laffer Curve, Welfare and Entitlements
The welfare state is bad news. It’s bad for taxpayers and it’s bad for recipients. It’s also bad for the economy since prosperity is in part a function of the quantity of labor that is productively employed. As such, government programs that lure people into...
by Dan Mitchell | Feb 16, 2016 | Big Government, Blogs, States, Welfare and Entitlements
For a wide range of reasons, the federal government should get out of the redistribution racket. Welfare programs are costly, but they’re also not among the enumerated powers granted to the federal government by the Constitution. But for those who don’t care whether...
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 18, 2016 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Welfare and Entitlements
Let’s dig into the issue of whether the United States should become more like France. In a 2014 study for the National Bureau of Economic Research, Stanford University’s Robert Hall wrote about America’s sub-par economic performance. His opening line was basically a...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 22, 2015 | Big Government, Blogs, Welfare and Entitlements
When I wrote earlier this year about “Europe’s suicidal welfare state,” it wasn’t so that I could make points about excessive spending and demographic decline. Yes, those are very important issues. But I was focusing instead on the fact that Europe’s welfare states...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 6, 2015 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Welfare and Entitlements
Three years ago, I shared a chart about the fiscal burden of the welfare state, calling it the picture that says a thousand word. It’s astounding, after all, that taxpayers spend so much money on means-tested programs and get such miserable results. Indeed, if we took...
