American lethargy
The welfare state is another potential culprit to which Cowen devotes little attention. Might it be encouraging complacency? Eli Lehrer and Lori Sanders of the center-right R Street Institute, for instance, have pointed out that welfare programs “t[ie] the poor down to their city or region” because those who move can lose housing vouchers or other benefits depending on what’s available in their new locale. Lehrer and Sanders propose allowing those who lose their jobs to “cash out” a year’s worth of unemployment benefits in a lump sum if they use the money to find a job somewhere else. Similarly, Nicholas Eberstadt of the conservative American Enterprise Institute argues that welfare and disability programs have financed an exodus of working-age males from the labor force: over the past half-century, working-age men have become increasingly likely to go without jobs, and at the same time the disability rolls have dramatically expanded. More than half of men out of the workforce live in households that claim disability benefits.
