The myth that entitlements destroy a nation's growth, busted in one chart
Our take: Many believe that the welfare states are doomed to have economic growth stunted, but this may not be the case. In this article, Matt O'Brien uses statistics to show that economic growth is not crushed because of entitlements.
We'd expect poorer countries to grow faster than richer countries. It's what economists call convergence. It hasn't exactly been a good decade for growth anywhere in the rich world. But it hasn't been any worse for countries with big welfare states versus countries with small welfare states.
You don't need to sacrifice economic security for economic growth. Other countries manage both just fine. Actually, the U.S. is in better shape than most other rich countries because our demographic crunch is much less ... crunchy? Our society is still growing, if aging.
Read more about Entitlments on The Atlantic.
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Excellent piece. It shows no correlation between social spending and economic growth. I'd like to see some conservative rebuttals.
What do the following countries have in common: Denmark, Belgium, Germany, Finland, Austria, and Sweden? At least two things. First, they *all* spend much more on social spending than Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy. Second, they are *all* More..
There's no pattern because they've taken a very complex set of multivariate data and reduced it to two variables on an x-y plot. Voila'! No correlations. This graph says almost nothing statistically. The title is horribly misleading More..