The Debt Dialogues is a weekly podcast that aims to educate young people about the welfare state and how it will affect their future. In this episode, I interview Manhattan Institute fellow Scott Winship on economic inequality, mobility, and the American Dream.
George Will: “This is the progressive premise in action: Because government provides infrastructure (roads, etc.) affecting everyone, and because government-dispensed money flows everywhere, everything is beholden to the government, and more or less belongs to the government, and should be subordinated to its preferences, which always are for more control of the nation’s wealth.” I’ve made this point in regard to the welfare state. The recipients of government handouts are inevitably told they have no right to assert their right to make independent decisions: they are “beholden to the government.”
This month marks the 79th anniversary of Social Security and the program’s finances are in disarray. The numbers are jarring. Social Security faces $23.1 trillion in unfunded liabilities, according to the program’s trustees, and if nothing changes, by 2033, payments will have to be cut by almost a quarter. The longer we wait to act, the more circumscribed our options will be.
In Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, Alex Tabarok reviews a new book that provides yet another glimpse into the inner workings of our destructive regulatory state. The book, called Innovation Breakdown: How the FDA and Wall Street Cripple Medical Advances, chronicles the fight by a company called MELA Sciences to win approval from the FDA for a noninvasive method for detecting skin cancer. Initially enthusiastic about the product, the FDA later turned against the company when a new FDA director with a less favorable view of business came on board. The author of the book, who was the company’s CEO at the time (he has since retired), spent a year of his life at great personal cost fighting with the FDA before prevailing.
The moral foundation of the welfare state is altruism: the doctrine that we have a duty to sacrifice for the needs of others. (See my interviews with Onkar Ghate and Peter Schwartz.) If you want to get a real sense of the meaning of this doctrine and its implications for human life, the best source is Ayn Rand. But Rand is often accused of caricaturing altruism.
The S&P recently came out with a report on how inequality is allegedly dampening economic growth. If you’re following the debate over Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, don’t miss this analysis from the Tax Foundation or this article from Don Boudreaux.
In this episode of The Debt Dialogues I interview Amity Shlaes, author of The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, about the cause of the Depression and how it made possible the creation of the American welfare state.
In his latest op-ed on Politix.topics.com, “Is Obamacare Here to Stay?,” ARI fellow Don Watkins asks: What does the history of Social Security tell us about the future of Obamacare?
On the July 16 edition of Coffee & Markets, Brad Jackson and Allysen Efferson had me on to discuss my new book on Social Security, how FDR’s program has hurt American self-reliance, and my End the Debt Draft campaign.
Laurence J. Kotlikoff testifies before the House Committee on Ways and Means Social Security subcommittee on the state of the program. I don’t agree with all his conclusions, but I definitely agree that the program’s finances are in far worse shape than is commonly understood. “To pay its scheduled benefits in full through time, the Social Security system needs a 32 percent immediate and permanent increase in the future path of payroll tax revenues. Based on the current covered earnings ceiling, this represents a 4-cent-on-the-covered-dollar higher payroll tax starting today and continuing forever. . . . Social Security is in dire financial shape.” Kotlikoff was the first guest featured on my podcast The Debt Dialogues, which you can check out here.
