Surveys consistently find welfare spending to be one of the least popular major activities of government. The 1996 welfare reform probably changed this a bit, but I bet the basic pattern is still there. It seems like this is one area where government does more than the median voter wants.
But: When you probe voter preferences a little further, it seems to me that you find something quite different, and this gem of a question from the National Survey of Public Knowledge of Welfare Reform and the Federal Budget (http://www.kff.org/content/archive/1001/welftbl.html) shows. Table 19: The Principal Goal Of Welfare Reform Views of American Adults By Political Affiliation Total Dem. Rep. Get people off welfare, but only if we can get them decent jobs by providing job training and education 63% 66% 60% Get people off welfare even if it means they 27% 22% 33% have to take a low-paying job Get people off welfare regardless of the 6% 7% 5% consequences Provide people on welfare with more money so 2% 5% 2% that they have a higher standard of living Other (vol.) 2% 1% 1% In other words, most Americans are unwilling to accept the only feasible way of drastically scaling back the system, which is expecting welfare recipients to take low-paying jobs. Frankly, this hesitance boggles my mind - if former welfare recipients shouldn't take low-paying jobs, who should? In any case, this strongly suggests to me that the lack of radical change is basically what the median voter wants. They only support radical reforms conditional on things that are sure to never happen. -- Prof. Bryan Caplan Department of Economics George Mason University http://www.bcaplan.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] "He was thinking that Prince Andrei was in error and did not see the true light, and that he, Pierre, ought to come to his aid, to enlighten and uplift him. But no sooner had he thought out what he should say and how to say it than he foresaw that Prince Andrei, with one word, a single argument, would discredit all his teachings, and he was afraid to begin, afraid to expose to possible ridicule what he cherished and held sacred." Leo Tolstoy, *War and Peace*
