All Posts Tagged With: "welfare state"
The Mobility Gap: What Does It Mean?
“Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe.”
6Jan2012 | Sheldon Richman | 16 comments | ContinuedBack on the Road to Serfdom: The Resurgence of Statism
Since the housing bubble burst in 2007, America’s social and economic troubles have mounted rapidly. Unemployment remains high, saving and investment low. The federal government is desperate to suck in enough money to pay its enormous tab for welfare and warfare a bit longer. Our politics have become increasingly vicious. About two-thirds of the people [...]
30Nov2011 | George C. Leef | 2 comments | ContinuedWhy the Titanic Is Sinking
The Declaration of Gratitude would destroy the assumption that government spending harms no one.
23Nov2011 | James L. Payne | 18 comments | ContinuedDusting Off a Man and His Classic
In 1870 the sultan of Turkey gave a book by a Scotsman to his entire entourage of top-ranking officials. The Khedive of Egypt had the same work inscribed and painted on the wall of the Royal harem. Two years later the Meiji dynasty ordered the book to be issued throughout Tokyo’s school system. Eventually every prefecture [...]
21Sep2011 | Lawrence W. Reed | 1 comment | ContinuedBondholders and Victims
Victims of the State have a stronger claim to resources in its possession than those who freely speculated in and hoped to profit from its power.
22Jul2011 | Sheldon Richman | 19 comments | ContinuedLiberty and the Power of Ideas
A belief that I stress again and again is that we are at war—not a physical, shooting war, but nonetheless a war that is fully capable of becoming just as destructive and just as costly. The battle for the preservation and advancement of liberty is a battle not against personalities but against opposing ideas. The [...]
25May2011 | Lawrence W. Reed | 9 comments | ContinuedBudget-Cutting Resistance
If libertarians are to expand the sphere of freedom while shrinking the sphere of force, they first need to be understood.
22Apr2011 | Sheldon Richman | 29 comments | ContinuedAmerica’s Turning Point
The Civil War represents the simultaneous culmination and repudiation of the American Revolution. Four successive ideological surges had previously defined American politics: the radical republican movement that had spearheaded the revolution itself; the subsequent Jeffersonian movement that had arisen in reaction to the Federalist State; the Jacksonian movement that followed the War of 1812; and [...]
23Mar2011 | Jeffrey Rogers Hummel | 22 comments | ContinuedIdeological and Political Underpinnings of the Great Society
The surge of federal economic interventions that occurred during Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency—the much-ballyhooed Great Society, whose centerpiece was the War on Poverty—differed from the four preceding surges, each of which had been sparked by war or economic depression. No national emergency prevailed when Johnson took office following John F. Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, [...]
24Feb2011 | Robert Higgs | 0 comments | ContinuedA Pen That Turns into a Sword
It’s a promotional giveaway pen, a rather nice one by BIC, white with red and blue writing that at first I found puzzling: MEN: Don’t lose benefits! Use this to register with Selective Service. Benefits from (or through, or with) Selective Service? When I turned 18 several years before the Vietnam era I registered for [...]
24Nov2010 | N. Joseph Potts | 5 comments | ContinuedThe Kid and the Benevolent Bully
After expenses, he was making 3-cents a serving and, at 30 cups a day, had netted more than $25 the first month.
1Nov2010 | Roger Koopman | 18 comments | ContinuedWhat Our Welfare State Really Is
Freeman contributor Kevin Carson has an excellent, and remarkably brief, analysis of America’s welfare state: “Giving Back With a Spoon, Taking With a Shovel.” Choice quote: In most avowedly “free market” discourse on the right, the main direction of government activity is framed as a war on the “productive” rich in favor of politically organized, [...]
4Oct2010 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedThe Paradox of the Welfare State
Welfare states face an inescapable paradox: The level of production needed to sustain a welfare state cannot be sustained by a welfare state. This paradox is created by policies that encourage the redistribution and consumption of wealth while discouraging its creation. In the face of such perverse incentives, living standards must fall even though, for [...]
22Sep2010 | Richard W. Fulmer | 24 comments | ContinuedWho’s Afraid of Socialism?
It is not obvious to me a priori that the American variant of the welfare state is superior in every respect to the European variant.
13Aug2010 | Sheldon Richman | 48 comments | ContinuedMalts in the Cafeteria
“Elect me and we will have malts in the cafeteria … every day!”
2Aug2010 | Tracy Stone Lawson | 14 comments | ContinuedThe Right Nation: Conservative Power in America
As I read them, our British authors, the sharp and witty Washington-based editors of the weekly London-based Economist, are modern-day if imperfect Alexis de Tocquevilles, updating Democracy in America by some 165 years. Recall the shrewd Tocqueville’s prescience in seeing how America, then but 45 years old and supposedly constrained by the Constitution, could wax [...]
10Jul2010 | William H. Peterson | 0 comments | ContinuedReturn to Greatness: How America Lost Its Sense of Purpose and What It Needs to Do to Recover It
Alan Wolfe is a professor of political science and the director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College. In the pages of his new book, Return to Greatness, we learn about one of the great disappointments and frustrations of his life: “An entire lifetime can pass–my adult lifetime actually–without [...]
10Jul2010 | Richard M. Ebeling | 0 comments | Continued-
The Latest
Contraception: Insuring the Uninsurable
Update below. Controversy rages over the Obama administration’s mandate that all employers – including... Read More
The Snow Plowers’ Petition
The following might have happened in a small college town in upstate New York… In a cold and snowy... Read More
Super Bowl versus Education?
In the spirit of Super Bowl weekend I’d like to deconstruct a Facebook status update that a friend... Read More
Capitalism, Corporatism, and the Freed Market
When a front-running presidential contender tells the country that thanks to Barack Obama, “[w]e are... Read More
Creating Jobs versus Creating Value
Picking on New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is one of the largest participation sports on the Internet.... Read More
