Negative Space: public assistance
- Everybody gets $7,000 a year
- Charles Murray argues that we can vastly reduce the cost of the welfare system and social security simply by giving everyone $7,000 a year plus a health plan.
- The Family Cow
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If you kill the cow for steak today, you won’t have any milk tomorrow. We are digging deep into our national cash cows—taxpayers—and we’re going to soon run out.
- Government cheese goes to school
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Government cheese is government cheese, whether it’s a poor food product, poor housing, or poor education.
- A grumpy basic income
- John Cochrane has useful thoughts on Charles Murray’s universal basic income, after the Swiss rejected a very different version.
- Has welfare failed us?
- Has welfare failed us, or have we overwhelmed the welfare system through other policies that encourage dependance and discourage economic development?
- Health care for prisoners
- Our criminal justice system must account for the possibility that it is wrong. Decent health care is one of the most obvious ways it should do this.
- How many legs does the ACA have?
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If you call public assistance insurance, how many people have insurance? The left wants us to believe that, like Lincoln’s apocryphal dog, the ACA has five legs. But when you call a tail a leg, that doesn’t mean the dog can walk on it.
- Social Security
- Just what is social security? Is it a welfare program or a pension fund, or something else we don’t understand?
- Social Security reform and the polls
- Republican efforts on social security reform may pay off even if polls indicate people don’t currently support reform.
- Starvation, sharing, and charity
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The modern world makes an evil out of sharing, and then complains that too many people go hungry.
- What is the state’s role in marriage and the family?
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The family has been changing in the United States for decades, partially because of misguided government policies. Now, same-sex marriage changes the family fundamentally. State and federal legislators should take a serious look at the state’s role in marriage and family.
- When You’ve Got Health, You’ve Got Everything
- Freedom? Five bucks. Health? Five bucks. Inciteful Fiction? Free!
More Information
- Universal Basic Income
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“…the bulk of government spending now does not go to people who are really poor. SSI and medicare go to old people, many of whom are quite well off. Housing subsidies such as the mortgage interest deduction go to people with big mortgages and big tax rates—nor poor people. Murray doesn't really emphasize this point, but his proposal is far more progressive than the current transfer system.”
