A Plan to Replace the Welfare State

Tech Central Station ^ | March 28, 2006 | Charles Murray

[untenured]

Max Borders: Joining us today we have Charles Murray, author of the new book, "In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State." Welcome, Charles.

Charles Murray: Good morning.

Borders: You've studied social safety nets for most of your career. What has the welfare entitlement state done to this country?

Murray: Well you have effects on two levels. One involves the effects of social programs intended to help the poor and the disadvantaged. And that was the topic of a book I wrote 20 odd years ago called Losing Ground, which said essentially we made things worse for the very people we were trying to help.

There is, however, another whole set of effects of the welfare state in the form of Social Security and Medicaid and other kinds of programs which take money from one American and give it to another American (whom the government has decided needs the money more). Whether it's taking it from a young person to give to a retiree, or whether it's taking it from a secretary in Alabama to give to a corporation that is getting a special favor from the government, all of these transfers -- and that's what they are: money from individual Americans to other individuals or to corporations -- seem to me to be a classic example of shipping money to Washington, seeing large amounts of it be wasted and go down the drain, and then it gets shipped out of Washington in much reduced form for dubious purposes.

And what "In Our Hands" is all about, ultimately, is saying: stop that. Just, if you're going to collect all this money, give it back to people as money and let them run their lives as they see fit.

[untenured]

Charles Murray is terrific. The NY Times once referred to him as "the country's most dangerous conservative."

[Atlas Sneezed]

Under discussion here:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1604631/posts

[Conservative Coulter Fan]

"We believe that human happiness requires freedom and that freedom requires limited government." --Charles Murray

Medicare/Medicaid has an unfunded liability of $30 trillion + another $18 trillion for the prescription drug bill + 11 trillion for Social Security while the National Debt is soaring towards $9 trillion and the Federal Government is running half a trillion dollar deficits each year. The beauty of it is Americans won't by and large kill the beast and they're bankrupting our country asd a result.

[Alia]

Thank you SO much for posting this interview. His ideas and goal for where "we" need to move towards is exactly right, IMHO. How we get there will no doubts be akin to a tacking exercise in sailing....

[Jack Black]

ping

[evilC]

The American Enterprise Institute has a video of the discussion on this topic.

http://www.aei.org/events/eventID.1278,filter.all/event_detail.asp

There is another thread on this topic at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1603315/posts
[not being the posting police, just linking FYI]