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Giving People Free Stuff Doesn’t Solve Problems

By January 14, 2025Commentary

One of the core pro(re)gressive beliefs is that people only commit crimes and engage in other bad social behavior because they are deprived–of shelter, food, medical care, a job.  So of course the solution is to just give people are kinds of free stuff, which has the side benefit of encouraging them to vote for you.  Of course, all this free stuff is paid for with other people’s money and increasingly with debt.  It is the crux of our financial crisis.  Research has repeatedly shown that the underlying premise is wrong as well.  That when you give people free stuff they don’t miraculously change their behaviors.

The most recent example is a paper on whether reciept of Medicaid led to less criminal behavior.  Medicaid is gold-plated health care–it covers everything, at literally zero cost to recipients.  The only downside is that one way its ballooning cost is covered is by paying providers far less than they receive from private insurers or Medicare, so a lot of providers just say no thanks to serving these patients.  It is a disgrace that Medicaid recipients, many of whom are slackers, get far better coverage than that received by workers who pay the taxes for all that free health care.

The researchers used Oregon’s natural health insurance experiment in which poorer people were randomly selected for Medicaid coverage eligibility to study the effect on crime.   The theory was that high rates of drug abuse and mental health issues were associated with crime and if you gave people access to treatment, crime would be reduced.  As you might expect, since I am writing about it, there was no such effect.  Being covered by Medicaid produced no significant reduction in crime among the recipients.  No surprise to me, because giving people stuff with no conditions won’t change behavior.    (NBER Paper)

Join the discussion 2 Comments

  • Kathy Longar says:

    A recent Star Tribune article said that 33% of babies were born to mothers in Medicaid. That seems shocking to me.

  • Rick Sechler says:

    Enabling folks is almost always deleterious to them and to society in general. There is NO incentive to change when benefits are simply given away.

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