A bunch of well-connected rich people and government officials are descending upon Switzerland for the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos. This upsets many people, and perhaps with some justification. After all, bad things often happen when big business and big government intersect. But some folks reflexively think that wealth is bad and they would like us to believe […]

I’ve shared many charts over the years, but two of the most compelling ones deal with poverty. The numbers in this chart, which are based on Census Bureau data and scholarly studies (see here, here, here, and here), show that the poverty rate was steadily falling in the United States – until the federal government decided to launch a so-called […]

The welfare state is a nightmare. Programs such as Medicaid are fiscal catastrophes. The food stamp program is riddled with waste. The EITC is easily defrauded, even sending checks to prisoners. And housing subsidies are a recipe for the worst forms of social engineering. The entire system should be tossed in the trash. But what’s […]

Forget the debate over whether Obama is a socialist. Now we’re discussing whether Jesus is for big government. Or, to be more accurate, the Pope has started a debate about whether free markets are bad, particularly for the poor. Samuel Gregg of the Acton Institute wrote about the underlying theological issues in an article for […]

Sometimes you find support for capitalism and small government in some rather unexpected places. I was surprised, for instance, when I found out that Gene Simmons, the lead singer for Kiss, stated that, “Capitalism is the best thing that ever happened to human beings. The welfare state sounds wonderful but it doesn’t work.” That’s pretty […]

Political cartoonists like Michael Ramirez and Chuck Asay are effective because they convey so much with images. But we need more than clever cartoons if we’re going to educate the general population about how government harms the economy and undermines freedom. And that’s why Thomas Sowell is so invaluable. He’s one of the nation’s top […]

With many European nations already in the midst of a fiscal crisis caused by excessive government, and with most other industrialized nations heading down the same path thanks to aging populations and poorly designed entitlement programs, this would be a good time for supposed experts to propose ways to rein in the welfare state. But […]

Remember Julia, the mythical moocher created by the Obama campaign to show the joys of government dependency? As illustrated by this Ramirez cartoon, Julia symbolizes the entitlement mentality. Unfortunately, there are many real-life Julias. I wrote a couple of years ago about Olga, a Greek woman who petulantly believed that government was responsible for her […]

I’ve written and pontificated about the problem of government-created dependency and how the welfare state traps people in poverty. I also shared this dramatic chart showing how redistribution programs create shockingly high implicit marginal tax rates for those with modest incomes. But when a liberal writer for the New York Times basically comes to the […]

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 to a screeching halt right about the time that the […]