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 Methodology, Welfare State, You Can't Have it Both Ways, labor markets on May 18th, 2012
We had a senior honors student do a paper on the Social Security Disability program that highlighted the trend in Disability takeup rates over the past 30 years and its impact on the federal budget and long-term budget outlook for the entire Social Security program. Today 1 in 5 social security dollars are paid out [...]
Posted in Politics, Welfare State, You Can't Have it Both Ways, labor markets on Apr 8th, 2012
Did you ever notice that when someone tries to point out how “stingy” government support for the poor is, or how “stingy” Walmart is or how bad the conditions of the low-skilled labor markets are that they invoke a kind of rugged individualism that would make Herbert Spencer blush? Seriously. I’ve seen many an argument [...]
Posted in Politics, Welfare State on Mar 13th, 2012
Economists have argued in many places that there may be a justification for public funding of the arts/humanities. And I am sure you have encountered arguments from people that suggest arts funding is shrinking or needs to be bigger and so on. But the fact remains that the arts get subsidized from at least two [...]
Posted in Immigration, Welfare State on Mar 1st, 2012
One of my excellent students sent me a link to this Stossel video last week and he asked my thoughts on what Jeff Miron had to say at about the 3:54 mark. It’s only about 30 seconds long after that, so do check it out. What I’d like to point out here are two things: [...]
Posted in Welfare State on Feb 25th, 2012
David Brooks makes a point I’ve been screaming about for years: When you include both direct spending and tax expenditures, the U.S. has one of the biggest welfare states in the world. We rank behind Sweden and ahead of Italy, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland and Canada. Social spending in the U.S.is far above the organization’s average In [...]
Posted in Welfare State, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Feb 16th, 2012
From the comments of this Econlog post, commentator Brandon Berg writes: So if someone who does benefit from the welfare state criticizes it, he’s a hypocrite. And if someone who doesn’t benefit from the welfare state criticizes it, he’s greedy. Got it. Is anyone allowed to object to the welfare state, or is dissent inherently [...]
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 [...]
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