Welfare works. Private sector charity doesn’t
by David Atkins
Matt Yglesias puts together a simple chart showing the awesome power of the welfare state to do good:
The “T&T” in the chart refers to “taxes and transfers”: i.e., the implementation of large-scale social welfare programs.
The only reason that our poverty rates haven’t gone down as much as those those of other countries is, of course, that our social welfare programs are far weaker than in those other countries. As Yglesias says:
The point? Child poverty is a problem government can help solve, if voters want it to. In Scandinavia, voters do want the problem solved, and they’re willing to pay the taxes necessary to get there. In the United States, not so much.
We may be a more religious nation than most. But that quite clearly hasn’t made us more moral.
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