Books, Arts & Manners

In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State, by Charles Murray (AEI, 222 pp., $20)

IN the late 1980s, Charles Murray engaged in a thought experiment. He had already, in Losing Ground, proposed doing away with welfare on the theory that it would improve the lot of poor people. Now he wondered whether people would be better off if the entire welfare state were done away with. Why not get rid of all the transfer programs and just give everyone a check?

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In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State, by Charles Murray (AEI, 222 pp., $20)

IN the late 1980s, Charles Murray engaged in a thought experiment. He had already, in Losing Ground, proposed doing away with welfare on the theory that it would improve the lot of poor people. Now he wondered whether people would be better off if the entire welfare state were done away with. Why not get rid of all the transfer programs and just give everyone a check?