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 supposed to look at the map and conclude that welfare benefits are too […]

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, he’s increased the burden of government, which […]

I took part in a thirty-minute online Skype debate for PBS on income inequality, and they boiled it down to the 4:44 youtube video embedded below. You probably won’t be surprised to learn that I said economic growth was the key. I don’t want to re-slice the pie. I want to make it bigger. I […]

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 for ratting out a couple of kids who were having an unlicensed (gasp!) […]

Is America filled with tens of millions of people suffering from harsh material deprivation? That’s what the pro-redistribution crowd wants you to think, but a new report from the Heritage Foundation demolishes that stereotype. Here are some of the most remarkable findings in the study. For most Americans, the word “poverty” suggests destitution: an inability […]

I’ve beaten up on Newt Gingrich for his views on global warming and his attack on the Ryan budget plan, but I’m completely on his side in the faux controversy about whether it is racist to call Barack Obama the “food stamp president.” This story from ABC News should worry everybody, regardless of whether the […]

This story from the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal makes the point, excerpted below, that the welfare state subsidizes dysfunctional behavior. But read the story to understand how big government destroys lives, ruins families, and creates inter-generational poverty. A very powerful, albeit very depressing article. It’s basically the American version of this grim news report from […]

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 some estimate. There also will be lots of […]

Walter Williams periodically has explained that the main beneficiaries of the so-called War on Poverty are all the bureaucrats who have very lucrative jobs in all the various redistribution programs, agencies, and departments. He calls these people “poverty pimps” and asks whether they actually have an incentive to solve problems since that would put their […]

Hugo Chavez is a palpably evil thug, and he confirms this status with a new proposal to issue cards that almost certainly will be used to ration food. Left-wing despots claim that their policies put “people above profits,” but they never can explain why people (especially the masses) have much higher living standards in countries […]