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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 Lawrence W. Reed, president of the Foundation for Economic Education, on his new book Excuse Me, Professor: Challenging the Myths of Progressivism. Topics covered include: the inherent conflict between economic equality and political equality, how the minimum wage actually hurts the people it is supposed to help, why government spending doesn’t lead to prosperity and how to effectively defend capitalism.
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 Jared Meyer, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and co-author of Disinhereted: How Washington Is Betraying America’s Young on how the regulatory-welfare state is harming younger Americans. Topics covered include: the failure of the government education system, the true cost of government entitlements and regulatory barriers to opportunity.
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 Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, on the recent demands by fast food workers for a $15 an hour minimum wage.
Michael Tanner: “[M]ore than one out of every three Americans live in households that are now on welfare. Looked at another way, America’s welfare state now has nearly three times the population of the largest actual state. . . . And none of these numbers include the middle-class social-welfare programs like Medicare and Social Security. Counting these programs, more than 153 million Americans, nearly half the population (49.5 percent), are living in households now dependent on government for a significant portion of their income.”
Stephen Moore, chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, published a hard-hitting op-ed in the Orange County Register over the weekend. It’s a timely follow-up to his viral 2009 Wall Street Journal column drawing parallels between the collapsing economy in Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged and the chaotic world of Washington politics at the height of the financial crisis.
A few weeks ago I was listening to the Dave Ramsey radio show and I heard him take a call from a young man who was struggling with a low-paying job and two kids he had to support all on his own. I was impressed with Dave’s advice.
I do not think a business leader should ever ask the federal government to raise the minimum wage. An executive like Jelinek is completely free to pay all of his employees above the current minimum wage — and he does. Jelinek argues that this is good for his business. It might be. Regardless, shouldn’t this be something that every business leader is free to decide for himself?
