By adopting programs to distribute substantial amounts of income, a nation guarantees that its government will become more powerful and invasive in other ways.

Once a bureau is created, its staff becomes a tenacious political interest group, well placed to defend its budget and to make a case for expanding its activities.

Transfer payments discourage the recipients from earning income in the present and from investing in their potential to earn income in the future. People respond to a reduced cost of idleness by choosing to be idle more often.

For members of the political class, the crucial question is always: how can we push out the frontier, how can we augment the government's dominion and plunder, with net gain to ourselves the exploiters who live not by honest production and voluntary exchange, but by fleecing those who do so?

In debates between anarchists and statists, the burden of proof clearly should rest on those who place their trust in the state. Anarchy's mayhem is wholly conjectural; the state's mayhem is undeniably, factually horrendous.

But politicians who talk about failed policies are just blowing smoke. Government policies succeed in doing exactly what they are supposed to do: channeling resources bilked from the general public to politically organized and influential interests groups.

By adopting programs to distribute substantial amounts of income, a nation guarantees that its government will become more powerful and invasive in other ways.