The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. – F.A. Hayek
Posted in Welfare State on Feb 2nd, 2012
I post regularly on how we spend over $6 trillion overall each year and supporters of government still complain that roads and bridges are crumbling and hilariously use that as evidence to support more government. Here is Kling reporting Murray on a related note: How in a country where most people don’t need a penny [...]
Posted in Entrepreneurs, Politics, Voluntary Society, Welfare State on Jan 27th, 2012
I strongly recommend reading Alex Tabarrok’s short e-Book Launching the Innovation Renaissance, which I will blog on shortly. Professor Tabarrok blogs it a little today, here is the entire thing: We like to think of ourselves as an innovation nation but our government is a warfare-welfare state. To build an economy for the 21st century [...]
Posted in Welfare State on Jan 24th, 2012
Here’s a decent research topic for interested students: find out how large the take-up rates for various welfare programs are by different demographic groups. Why do I ask? My sense is that a decent (apx 20%) share of the users of food-stamps, Medicaid and other public welfare programs are not from the class of needy [...]
Posted in Welfare State, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Dec 6th, 2011
I am doing my very best to limit my rants to sledding today. This sort of thing makes it hard, particularly when you combine it with my unwillingness to be charitable to people anymore. Obama dropped almost all pretenses and made the progressive case against an American free market system, which he called “a simple [...]
Posted in Taxation, Welfare State on Nov 28th, 2011
I suppose I am guilty of it, but tax guru Emmanuel Saez (one of the guys who work the IRS data to illustrate the rising income inequality in the US) just wrote a second paper in a few months with the implied (or direct) conclusion: raise taxes on the rich. Of course, it is all [...]
Posted in Voluntary Society, Welfare State on Nov 9th, 2011
I pointed it out here. Here is another lovely illustration. I apologize for excerpting the entire post. … in 1979, households in the bottom quintile received more than 50 percent of all transfer payments. In 2007, similar households received about 35 percent of transfers. … Any private relief organization that gave only 35 percent of [...]
Posted in Health Care, Welfare State, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Oct 31st, 2011
John Goodman with a typically astute observation on the double standard that applies to health policy: Arizona…plans to limit adult Medicaid recipients to 25 days of hospital coverage a year, starting as soon as the end of October. Hawaii plans to cut Medicaid coverage to 10 days a year in April. Other states have already [...]
Posted in Behavior, Paternalism, Welfare State, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Oct 19th, 2011
Has anyone who has ever written about this topic ever shopped in a grocery store for more than one person? I think I am going to randomly post our family meals up here for all to see, then tell me what you think about the meme, “the poor can only afford calorie dense, fatty, unhealthy, [...]
Posted in Welfare State on Sep 8th, 2011
… how bad the riots in England might have been if everyone didn’t have free health care.
Posted in Government Thuggery, History, Welfare State, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Aug 31st, 2011
Here begins the presentation of a cornucopia of less well-know acts committed by the “greatest” Presidents in American history. To get us started, here is President Bush’s unconstitutional assault on limited executive power and the privacy of American citizens: This organization (the influential Friends of Democracy) won the gushing plaudits of the ever-gushing Mrs. President. [...]
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