Tate

I think a politician who is willing to do something unpopular is commendable, even perhaps when it violates campaign promises, but only when it decreases the size and scope of the state. For example, it would take more guts than pretty much any politician has to cut Social Security entitlements, especially if one has promised not to cut them. Sometimes politicians make promises that are contradictory and cannot possibly be kept, but it's never the case that not raising taxes cannot be kept.

I ask this question out of sincere curiosity: "For people who believe that big government improves the lot of the typical middle class person, in what way does it do so?" If we are to talk about the huge programs of Medicare and Social Security (not Medicaid since that is supposed to be a benefit for the poor), we are talking about programs for the elderly, not the working middle class person. Indeed, it would seem that these programs would make the working middle class worse off because of the huge payroll taxes put upon them that takes a huge bite from their wages. Other transfer payments, such as food stamps, aid to needy families, etc. seem to only apply to the poor. I would think that it's probably the middle class that makes the greatest use of federal student loans, though it is hard to say that they are a benefit since they lead to college being ridiculously expensive. So, if someone could answer the above question for me (even if the answer such people would give is fallacious, that's great, I just want to know how they think), I would appreciate it.

Look on mises.org. Lots of good revisionist history there. I think the resource that the people of mises.org would point to is Rothbard's America's Great Depression (http://mises.org/rothbard/agd.pdf)

Though not about the collapse of welfare states, I really enjoyed Bruce D. Porter's "War and the Rise of the State" in how it explains the interconnectedness of the welfare and warfare state. I'm sorry that I don't know of any good articles on this topic. If nothing else, consider this a bump of your topic because I think it is a really good question.

I really wonder what the methodologies of these "non-partisan studies" that somehow believe that vastly increasing the marginal cost of that 50th employee will have a negligible effect. Are these available anywhere? It just boggles my mind how they imagine the demand curves for labor must look to these employers! They must have some sort of monopsony power to be able to pay workers so much under their marginal productivity (or at least that's what I imagine these studies might say).

IDK, I feel like the analogy can only go so far. For example, with economic progress there are many people who are alive today that wouldn't have been able to survive in centuries past. Agricultural methods have improved such that there is much more output per acre and so land that would have had to have been used to produce food to sustain today's population is freed up for other uses. Thus, "weaker" people (such as myself, probably) are able to survive largely based on the technological advancements and capital accumulation of others. But it definitely is interesting that there are examples in nature of utility-maximizing behavior being mutually beneficial.

Wow. So, if I own physical precious metal, what would be the best way to protect it?

Please forgive my lack of citations. I forget the particular podcasts/YouTube videos I was consuming. I felt like there was an apparent contradiction in some of the ideas Stefan presented about the State. In one particular episode, if I recall correctly, he said that there is no entity that is "The State," rather, it is an idea in people's heads, without which it wouldn't exist. There is little difference between the State and private criminal organizations in terms of their morality; it is only that the former enjoys the benefit of being justified in the minds of most people. Elsewhere, in explaining why his multi-generational approach is necessary, he said that it wouldn't work to simply push a button abolishing the State (if that option were available to us) since many people would call for the return of it. It would seem that if the State were only an idea that abolition would very nearly be the end of it, since what is being abolished is the idea itself. But if we think of abolishing the State in terms of the forceful arrangements that exist (such as taxation, regulation, etc.), then it might not be the end of it, since most people don't fully understand these things.