David McElroy

Why do people seem shocked to find out that if you give people incentives not to work, many of them are going to take advantage of that if they can get away with it?

This American Life has an episode this week about the explosive growth of the $200-billion-a-year federal disability program, but the reporter and host seem shocked that people could be doing what the system gives them incentives to do. Even after an hour of reporting — in which there was discussion of poverty, job prospects and more — there wasn’t any mention of the simple economic fact that people do what they have incentives to do.

This episode is reported by NPR’s Planet Money, and the reporter seems to be going out of her way to come up with as many semi-legitimate excuses for the problem as possible. Overall, she sounds like a progressive liberal who’s confronted with evidence that a progressive government program doesn’t work — and she’s trying to avoid offending other progressives by pointing that out.

(Other progressive are offended, though. The left-wing organization Media Matters for America has blasted back at the allegedly “error-riddled story.”)

The piece goes to great lengths at times to attempt to explain away the problem as a simple matter of poor people turning to the disability program because they have no other choices. What the reporter doesn’t seem to understand is that people react to incentives. If they’re going to starve or be homeless in the place where they are (with the skills they have), people tend to find a way to do something about it — whether that entails migrating or learning something new.

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A speeding ticket isn’t normally that big a deal for a politician, but a traffic stop turned into a publicity nightmare for New York state legislator Steve Katz last Thursday.

When a state trooper pulled Katz over for going 80 mph in a 65-mph zone, he noticed the smell of marijuana coming from inside the car. When questioned, Katz turned over a small bag of what appeared to be weed. He was charged with possession of marijuana and released, because the trooper didn’t think Katz was impaired.

The bigger issue — and the one that’s made it a national story — is that Katz is a Republican state assemblyman who’s “railed against illegal drugs,” according to the local newspaper in the area. In addition, he voted last year against legalizing medical marijuana.

In other words, he’s the typical politician who’s telling a mainstream audience what it wants to hear and voting the way his voters want him to vote.

Predictably, this has turned into a story just about his obvious hypocrisy. While that’s certainly the case, the real story is that voters don’t know their legislators — because those legislators tell voters whatever they want to hear in order to get elected and stay in office.

I’ve mentioned before that when I worked in politics, I didn’t ask each client which issues he wanted included in the campaign material I produced for him. Although the client certainly reviewed material before it was printed, the issues were almost always the ones that I selected — and I wrote exactly what voters wanted to hear. That’s just the way politics works.

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Of the politicians currently in Congress, Rand Paul is probably the one whose views would be least damaging to the country if he were made president. In other words, I consider him the “least bad” of the bunch.

Despite that — and despite the fact that I liked his political theater last week — I won’t support him for president. It’s for the same reason I didn’t support his father for president. I don’t want anybody to be president.

I’m opposed to the entire current system. I don’t support any system that says it has the power to tell others what to do and says it has the power to steal their money. The idea at the core of our system as it’s constituted — that the majority have the right to make up rules that everyone else has to obey — is immoral and evil. Anybody who takes the reins of power in that system is giving legitimacy to that idea.

Some people who see themselves as pragmatists believe they should be a part of the system, saying that it’s the only way to influence the system and that since the system is going to exist, we might as well accept it and get seats at the table when the power is divvied up. I understand that position, because I tried to live that way for awhile. Eventually, though, I had to give it up as morally bankrupt.

Even if you’re a libertarian — of the minarchist type — and believe it’s OK to establish a central governing authority over what we call the United States, Rand Paul isn’t much of a libertarian. He’s an odd mixture of libertarian and pragmatist conservative. That might actually sell well in a future Republican primary, but it shouldn’t carry much weight with libertarians.

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