Homines libenter quod volunt credunt
Posted in Corporatism, Welfare State on Jul 15th, 2012
I know we all think that the $20B to $30B each year in farm subsidies is intended to put money in the pockets of farmers for either growing or not growing foodstuffs. But as I sit here on this hot Sunday I cannot help but shake the idea that the reason the agricultural lobby is […]
Posted in Environment, Politics, Welfare State on Jul 11th, 2012
Not just this one, I mean this one: This is an image of the Berkeley Pit from Butte, MT. Roger Meiners introduced me to it in a talk I attended at PERC last month. Without going into too much detail, this pit was the source of very valuable copper and magnesium and other metals for […]
Posted in Price System, Welfare State, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Jun 26th, 2012
The village nearest where I live is (lovely) Fairport, NY. One of the features of being a Fairport resident is that you can purchase your power through Fairport Electric, which is a village owned power company that purchases power from the New York Power Authority, and then sells it to residents for very low prices. […]
Posted in Welfare State on Jun 20th, 2012
In this morning's nausea news: Gary Leff reports on a new Amtrak program whereby those who join the National Association of Railroad Passengers, a D.C.-based “advocacy organization” that supports greater Amtrak subsidies, get special discounts on Amtrak tickets. Leff comments: Whatever you think of government funding for train travel in the United States, is it problematic […]
Posted in labor markets, Methodology, Welfare State, You Can't Have it Both Ways 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 labor markets, Politics, Welfare State, You Can't Have it Both Ways 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 […]