Ron and Ed welcome Michael Tanner of the CATO Institute to engage in a conversation about The Project on Poverty and Inequality in California which builds on Michael's most recent book, The Inclusive Economy: How to Bring Wealth to America’s Poor, a comprehensive look at the ways government contributes to poverty in the United States.
A bit more about Michael Tanner
Michael Tanner is a Cato Institute senior fellow and heads research into a variety of domestic policies, with an emphasis on poverty and social welfare policy, health care, and Social Security and entitlement reform. More recently Tanner has undertaken a major project to develop innovative solutions to poverty in California, which is widely seen as a model for building bipartisan consensus around innovative ways to reform government-imposed barriers to economic participation by the poor and marginalized groups. Tanner is also the author of numerous other books on public policy, including Going for Broke: Deficits, Debt, and the Entitlement Crisis, Leviathan on the Right: How Big-Government Conservatism Brought Down the Republican Revolution, Healthy Competition: What’s Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It, The Poverty of Welfare: Helping Others in Civil Society, and A New Deal for Social Security. He also contributed a chapter on libertarian solutions for poverty to Libertarianism.org’s Visions of Liberty. Called a “lucid writer and skilled polemicist” by the New York Times and hailed as one of the nation’s five most influential experts on Social Security by Congressional Quarterly, Tanner’s writings have appeared in nearly every major American newspaper, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. A prolific writer and frequent guest lecturer, Tanner appears regularly on news programs.
Below are the show notes. Use them to follow along while listening to the podcast:
His book, The Inclusive Economy, is a culmination of Michael Tanner’s research over the years. “Why are people poor in the first place?” is his starting point. https://www.amazon.com/Inclusive-Economy-Bring-Wealth-Americas/dp/194864701X
There is some validity to The Success Sequence (graduate high school, college, get a job, get married) but the real question is WHY is that the case.
If you doubled everyone’s income tomorrow, you wouldn’t get rid of inequality but everyone would be better off (leaving aside the obvious macro economic factors).
California has large pockets of wealth, a very reasonable economic growth rate, and deep social programs. But they have the highest poverty rate in the nation. So what has gone wrong in California?
There are two types of homelessness and they can both be seen in California. Those on the street are the result of various mental or drug issues (largely a chicken/egg scenario). But at $3,000 per month in rent, there is a set of working homeless that are less obvious.
Even before the economic disruptions caused by COVID-19, far too many Californians were living in poverty. That is the starting point for the Project on Poverty and Inequality in California. Link here: https://www.cato.org/project-poverty-inequality-california
No doubt, the criminal justice system makes it hard for people to get out of poverty. To make it worse, there are so many interactions with police because so many things are illegal.
True story: Ohio prisons teach barber skills (among other skills). But in Ohio you can’t get a license to be a barber if you have a criminal record. Your government at work, ladies and gentlemen.
“Fund students instead of systems” is a way to approach the public school monopoly. More from CATO here: https://www.cato.org/commentary/fund-students-instead-systems
CEQA is the California Environmental Quality Act. The original intention is far from the use today where it is now being used to block housing projects of all kind and has contributed significantly to California’s housing shortage. https://opr.ca.gov/ceqa/
California is the 4th worse state when it comes to occupational licensure. Check out our previous show on this. Link here: https://www.thesoulofenterprise.com/225
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Our guest today is one of THE top social security experts. Michael feels we are going to have to reduce social security benefits and then fill in that gap with private investments. This is a tweet and that’s just a start.
“You don’t spend you way out of poverty. You save your way out of poverty.” —Michael Tanner
Nothing has raised more people out of poverty than free market capitalism over the years. Michael Tanner and Professor McCloskey are well aligned here. @prudentiamag
A big THANK YOU to Michael Tanner for joining us today. His book, The Inclusive Economy, is available today at this link: https://www.amazon.com/Inclusive-Economy-Bring-Wealth-Americas/dp/194864701X/
In addition, as a senior fellow at the Cato Institute you can find his bio here plus links to much of his work. https://www.cato.org/people/michael-d-tanner
