Welcome back to the Ten Blocks podcast. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal.

Joining me on today's

show is Chris Pope. He's a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a political scientist, and an

expert on health care policy. His recent writing for City Journal punctures myths about the American

welfare state by bringing a comparative perspective to the issue. So, Chris, thanks very much for coming

on the show. Thanks, Brian. Good to speak with you. So let's start with one of the more striking

observations that you made in a recent piece for us. A recent study published by the World Inequality

Lab at the Paras School of Economics observed that the U.S. stands out as the

country that redistributes the greatest fraction of national income to the bottom 50%. Now, this flies

against everything we're typically hearing about the American welfare state, which is supposed

to be so stingy.

So what is, you know, what is up with that?

So I think the best way to understand that observation is that it's stingy in so far as we're very careful who we give benefits to.

But when you actually get benefits, if you're disabled, if you're unemployed, if you're a

single mother, the actual benefit levels are comparable to the levels you might see in Europe.

What we do do is we make very careful, we make very sure that people who get benefits

unable to work,

that with this generally the case in disability.

We kind of do probably more verification than other nations do.

In the case of unemployment, we limit the duration of benefits so that they're not indefinite.

And for pensions, which is probably the most expensive of these benefits, in terms of fiscally,

we replace a smaller share of rich people's incomes.

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