by Dan Mitchell | Sep 22, 2023 | Big Government, Blogs, Welfare and Entitlements
I periodically explain that redistribution is bad for prosperity, mostly because it encourages sloth and dependency among recipients. Though it is important to realize that the taxes needed to fund redistribution also are harmful (the magnitude of the...
by Dan Mitchell | May 23, 2023 | Big Government, Blogs, Welfare and Entitlements
There are three troubling things about the politics of poverty. First, I frequently grouse and complain that some folks on the left don’t actually care about helping poor people. Instead, as explained in my Eighth Theorem of...
by Dan Mitchell | May 3, 2023 | Blogs, Taxation
In past columns on the topic of basic income, most of my attention has focused on how universal handouts would undermine the work ethic. To be succinct, I fear that a non-trivial share of the population would exit the labor force if they...
by Dan Mitchell | Mar 24, 2023 | Big Government, Blogs, Welfare and Entitlements
I’ve repeatedly expressed opposition to “universal basic income” and I repeated those concerns as part of a conference at the Acton Institute earlier this week. If you don’t want to spend two minutes to watch the video, all you need to know is that I’m worried that...
by Dan Mitchell | Mar 20, 2023 | Blogs
There are some policy fights that focus on technical disagreements (for instance, how much do deadweight losses increase when tax rates go up?) and other policy fights that involve moral disagreements (for instance, should drugs be...
