This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, April 14th, 2017. I'm Caleb Brown. What are the costs and benefits of welfare

states around the world? James Bartholomew is author of the new Cato book, The

Welfare of Nations. We spoke in January.

You look at welfare states across the globe and what are some of the big things that we learn about the major differences and similarities in welfare states around the globe?

Well, first of all, you learn that there are an awful lot of similarities.

Each country thinks it's unique, but I found over and over again it was like Groundhog Day

and that you found similar things happening.

You found mass unemployment, you found disability benefits going up, you found health care that was either getting

too expensive or else was rationed. So the same things came up again and again, but there are

obviously huge variations and you might have for example people

elderly people be still very frequently looked after by their children in

Spain but very very rarely rarely in the Netherlands.

So there were some huge contrast

and the rate of single parenting.

Still very low in Japan and very high in America.

When people point to European. and very high in America.

When people point to European welfare states, I think most famously Bernie Sanders likes to

point to these European welfare states as being incredibly successful?

What would you tell him?

First of all, I'd have to recover from the astonishment that anyone would think that

they were so successful.

I mean, there are pockets of success. I think you could say that the

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