One of the recurring themes in debates over the entitlement state is that most people are on the dole through no fault of their own, and that the only way they can succeed is if the rest of us are taxed to give them free education, free job training, free child care, subsidized transportation, and anything else the entitlement state's supporters come up with. Is that true?
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 Lee Ohanian, Professor of Economics at UCLA, on the state of the economy.
Over at the American Enterprise Institute blog, James Pethokoukis takes me to task for opposing a government "safety net," i.e., for advocating the total abolition of the welfare state.
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 Sylvester Schieber, former chairman of the Social Security Advisory Board and author of The Predictable Surprise: The Unraveling of the U.S. Retirement System, on the question: Does America face a retirement crisis?
Paul Ryan just released a plan to reform the welfare state in order to encourage work and upward mobility. Ryan has long been worried that our “safety net” has become a “hammock,” lulling people into long-term dependency and punishing them for working: many poor Americans can actually lose money by getting a job and forgoing whatever handouts they were previously eligible for.
Freedom of speech is under siege. Not by the “amplified” voices of billionaires and corporations, but by the sundry spokesmen for “the public” demanding that government should have the power to silence individuals via campaign finance laws.
Let me share something with you that’s a little personal. One of the greatest sources of joy in my life is my one-year-old daughter, and my wife and I are eager — that’s too weak a word, actually — to have another kid. But we simply cannot afford to.
If Apple’s pending appeal of last year’s ebook antitrust verdict fails, the company will have to pay $450 million in “consumer relief,” according to class-action lawyers for the plaintiffs.
Paul Krugman doesn’t think that you can read. Or, at any rate, he doesn’t think you’ll bother to read the most recent long-term economic outlook from the Congressional Budget Office.
