by Dan Mitchell | Nov 24, 2023 | Big Government, Blogs, Europe
Last month, I shared data on per-capita welfare spending in American states. The big takeaway was that states such as New York and California were spending more tan twice as much as states such as Texas and Florida. And I concluded...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 17, 2023 | Big Government, Blogs, States, Welfare and Entitlements
Back in 2010, I put together a “Moocher Index” based on the percentage of non-poor people in each state getting government handouts. Based on that back-of-the-envelope calculation, Vermont, Mississippi, and Maine were the biggest moocher states and Nevada, Colorado,...
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...
