http://www.cato-unbound.org/2007/03/22/brink-lindsey/collectivism-isnt-in-our-genes/ Big Ideas for a Better World Sat, 04 Feb 2012 12:01:59 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 http://www.cato-unbound.org/2007/03/22/brink-lindsey/collectivism-isnt-in-our-genes/comment-page-1/#comment-367624 Cato Unbound » Blog Archive » Oddballs vs. Scholars, For Negative Liberty, Against the Welfare State Wed, 09 Jun 2010 14:34:49 +0000 http://www.cato-unbound.org/?p=437#comment-367624 [...] Brink’s response to Tyler makes some good points, but I think he’s missing the hardest problem here: Tyler says that “the welfare state is here to stay, whether we like it or not.” I agree. But the question is: what kind of welfare state are we going to have? Is the status quo – in which the welfare state is dominated by universal entitlement programs that mostly shuffle money from one cohort of the middle class to another – really the best we can hope to achieve? Or is it possible to restructure the welfare state so that its primary focus is on the poor and temporarily distressed? [...] [...] Brink’s response to Tyler makes some good points, but I think he’s missing the hardest problem here: Tyler says that “the welfare state is here to stay, whether we like it or not.” I agree. But the question is: what kind of welfare state are we going to have? Is the status quo – in which the welfare state is dominated by universal entitlement programs that mostly shuffle money from one cohort of the middle class to another – really the best we can hope to achieve? Or is it possible to restructure the welfare state so that its primary focus is on the poor and temporarily distressed? [...]

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