Tag: welfare

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Accountability free trade & free markets moral hazard national politics & policies political challengers porkbarrel politics responsibility subsidy too much government

Trump Proposes a Budget

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Will Donald Trump, infamously successful businessman, actually do something about the federal government’s out-​of-​control deficits and mounting debt?

Economist Pierre Lemieux, writing in the Financial Post, finds some reason for hope in President Trump’s “America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again”:

The proposal to eliminate funding for agencies like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities is welcome. Artists should be able to stand on their own two feet with the support of private sponsors and organizations, of which there are many in America. Lovers of concerts should finance their own passion.

Though Lemieux gives good reason to want to cut “official arts and humanities” subsidies even sans their budgetary implications, imagine the backlash from Democrats, the media and the whole collegiate sector!

Actually, the backlash has already begun.

Can united government under the GOP cut even these most obviously least necessary aspects of government subsidy?

I’m not holding any pockets of air in my two lungs.

“Many monstrous bureaucracies would be reined in,” Lemieux goes on, listing proposed cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency (-31 percent), Department of Labor (-21 percent), and other departments of the so-​called “discretionary” budget. But this is all small potatoes. “Really cutting federal expenditures would require reducing the welfare state — which Trump has no intention of doing.”

And the fortunes Trump wishes to throw at the military? No knack for parsimony there.

Though we can expect a little exceptional hack-​and-​slashery from Trump, Lemieux remains skeptical of any overall major effect.

Get used to ballooning debt.

Like you haven’t already.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly general freedom moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies responsibility

Town, County, Stasis

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The savvier economists (and intellectuals like Steven Pinker) like to remind us that it is progress that must be explained; poverty is natural.

But when you see poverty settle in like an infestation of slime mold, staining a whole modern city or region, you begin to wonder. As Ron Bailey wonders in his excellent Reason report on West Virginia’s impoverished McDowell County …

WHY DON’T THESE PEOPLE JUST MOVE?

The feeling of being trapped in your community — in your hovel, in your own blighted life — does not come, these days, from mere poverty alone. I remember the Joads in The Grapes of Wrath; my family has a history. Once upon a time, folks in America, when industry ran out, left. Traveled. Migrated — to find work where industry boomed.

And sure, McDowell used to be much more populated. Bailey’s family left two generations ago.

But the stragglers?

Almost any community has its specific enticements.

But one thing becomes clear, as you read through Bailey’s sad survey (in part memoir, since he has family ties there): government is the worst culprit.

A lot of welfare goes into McDowell, and a huge percentage of the population is retired or on disability.

“If you get public assistance to supply your needs without any effort from you,” explains one young man who came back to his beleaguered hometown, “you’ve got no incentive to better yourself or your situation.”

Government subsidizes poverty. Sure, it prevents destitution. Utter misery. But it also traps people, robbing them of their wherewithal to get up and go and achieve something.

Modern government is in the stasis business. Our assistance programs don’t just assist.

A modern American nightmare.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies responsibility too much government

ABC’s of Deceptive Politics

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In breaking news, a major politician has promised to give important benefits to the poor and the middle class.

She did not specify where those benefits would come from. But we know where they do come from: taxpayers. What this politician has done is promise to take from some to give others. Actually, it’s even more complicated — after taking from some folks, then there’s the skimming off the top (or: taking a big chunk); and after that, there’s the hoopla about the money she is “giving” back.

This is how politicians work. Vague talk and big promises, backed up by the ability to tax and the sanction to threaten your life if you don’t comply.

Characteristically, they avoid talk of the costs of their actions. They focus on the “benefits.”

Many, many years ago, a great American sociologist explained the process:

A and B put their heads together to decide what C shall be made to do for D. The radical vice of all these schemes, from a sociological point of view, is that C is not allowed a voice in the matter, and his position, character, and interests, as well as the ultimate effects on society through C’s interests, are entirely overlooked. I call C the Forgotten Man.

That was written in 1883. In 1932, a major politician took the term, “The Forgotten Man,” and applied it not to C but to D.

And since then, politicians have tended to ignore C entirely, except to make them feel guilty for not doing more for D (and, by implication, A and B).

You can see why I prefer direct action on discrete issues by responsible citizens. In which the C’s are consulted.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Original Photo Credit: David Goehring on Flickr (Creative Commons)

 

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moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies responsibility too much government

Sit, UBI, Sit: Play Dead

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This weekend, the Swiss people rejected the idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) with a whopping 77 percent against.

That’s the kind of overwhelming result that one finds in America for, say, term limits. And 23 percent, you might notice, is about the percentage of the population in America of hard-​core “liberal” progressives, the kind of people usually in support of such measures.

In Switzerland’s case, it was a measure put on the ballot by one group, Bien-​CH. But if you are thinking “socialism,” the group insists that that’s the wrong way to think about the plan. UBI is needed, the group’s website says, “to grease the wheels of the capitalist economies” facing a declining need for workers as a result of technological advance.

Yes, UBI is a policy designed to accommodate the coming horde of robots! How? By “increasing demand” by spreading out wealth from the connected-​to-​tech few to the witless-​about-​tech many. (How vulgar Keynesian.)

The Swiss government urged a No vote, fearing a need to raise taxes by fifty percent. Quite a hike.

Meanwhile, the notion garners worldwide interest, and even libertarian social scientist Charles Murray promotes this guaranteed income idea (under a different initialism), mostly to streamline the costly bulk of the welfare state.

I’m dubious.

After all, about our latest industrial revolution, in artificial intelligence and in robotics: I say open up labor and entrepreneurial markets from excessive regulation, and allow networking advances to transform capitalism on its own terms, with person-​to-​person (P2P) cooperation (think AirBnB and Uber and Lyft) and much more.

The best is coming, I bet. If clunky proposals like UBI don’t get in the way.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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