As I and others have pointed out, all of the risks that welfare state supporters say we need government “social insurance” to protect ourselves against — accident, illness, old age, job loss — can and were addressed privately and voluntarily before the creation of the welfare state: through private savings, insurance, informal help, formal charity and, notably, mutual aid societies.
When I tell people that I’m working to abolish the welfare state, the most common response I get is not, “That’s awful!” It’s actually some version of, “You’re being unrealistic.” Given the apologetic, uninspiring arguments critics of the welfare state typically offer, it’s hard to blame people for that attitude.
In his essay, Mike Konczal starts by challenging the view that the American welfare state started with the New Deal. If he can convince us that America was always a welfare state, then not only is it wrong to point to the period before the 1930s as evidence that free enterprise works — but the very notion that American ideals clash with welfare state ideals becomes harder to swallow.
In this episode of The Debt Dialogues, I talk with John Cochrane, the AQR Capital Management Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
In my recent op-ed, I discuss how the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 has distorted labor relationships in unionized industries by forcing employers and employees to deal with unions.
“Ideology is as much about understanding the past as shaping the future.” So starts Mike Konczal’s recent Democracy Journal article, “The Voluntarism Fantasy.” And on this point, he couldn’t be more right.
