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CIAO DATE: 6/5/2006
A Plan to Replace the Welfare State
Charles Murray
April 2006
Abstract
On March 22, 2006, Charles Murray, the W. H. Brady Scholar in Culture and Freedom at AEI, published an article in the Wall Street Journal that described the broad outlines of his new book In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State (AEI Press, 2006). On March 24, 2006, the American Enterprise Institute held a book forum to celebrate the publication of the book. At the forum, AEI president Christopher DeMuth and Brookings Institution guest scholar Jonathan Rauch discussed the book, and Murray responded to their questions and to some from the audience. What follows are Murray's Wall Street Journal article and excerpts from the book forum at AEI.
This much is certain: the welfare state as we know it cannot survive. No serious student of entitlements thinks that we can let federal spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid rise from its current 9 percent of GDP to the 28 percent of GDP that it will consume in 2050 if past growth rates continue. The problems facing transfer programs for the poor are less dramatic but, in the long term, no less daunting; the falling value of a strong back and the rising value of brains will eventually create a class society making a mockery of America's ideals unless we come up with something more creative than anything that the current welfare system has to offer.