Welfare and redistribution programs.

The logic is relentless, but apparently quite resistible if you are a Progressive, or even a middle roader.

• the strongest and most reliable and permanent anti-poverty force in the world and in our economy is economic growth
• welfare and redistribution programs may help poor people get by but in general they do not equip them with permanent skills and financial independence for the long run
• welfare and redistribution programs are expensive and reduce economic growth and add to the national debt
• therefore, increasing welfare and distribution programs increase long term poverty
• increasing these programs, a tipping point is reached beyond which economic growth is too low to pay even the interest on the debt, the long term result of this is to reduce all incomes, rich and poor.

The way this logic is denied is to challenge the claim that welfare and redistribution programs reduce economic growth. Putting it to the test could be a fatal mistake.

At one level the matter is simple. The trade off is between being unequally rich or equally poor. If we mean by equality, equality before the law, there is no trade off. Or as Hayek put it, the only way to make people equally well off is to treat them unequally.