Quote Of The Day

“There are two main utilitarian arguments against liberal welfare benefits: First, poverty is almost always caused by bad choices—bad for those who make them, bad for their childen, and bad for society as a whole. The big one is having children out of wedlock. Liberal welfare benefits greatly diminish the cost—particularly the short-run costs—of making these choices, and thus make it less likely on the margin that people will make better choices. There’s no question that welfare programs decrease post-transfer poverty in the short run, but in the long run they tend to increase pre-transfer poverty. The second argument is that income redistribution tends to slow down economic growth, which makes all of us poorer in the long run”. –Brandon Berg, blogging at Catallarchy