Bryan Caplan presenta dos buenos argumentos contra el Estado del Bienestar, uno que apela a nuestra intuición ética y otro de carácter económico a favor de la libre inmigración, que pese a ser la mejor política anti-pobreza no causa furor entre quienes defienden el Estado del Bienestar para "ayudar a los más pobres". Copio debajo (énfasis mío):
Almost no one thinks you should be legally required to financially assist your relatives - even your indigent parents who raised you. The welfare-state abolitionist can fairly ask all of these people a tough question: If your parents shouldn't have a legal right to your help when they really need it, why should complete strangers?
Second, and probably even more compellingly, the existence of welfare state is one of the main rationalizations for undercutting the greatest anti-poverty campaign the world has ever known: immigration. (Friedman said it most clearly: "You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state." But Krugman's in full agreement). And unlike the welfare state, immigration has and continues to help absolutely poor people, not relatively poor Americans who are already at the 90th percentile of the world income distribution. There's no reason for libertarians to make apologies to social democrats: Libertarian defenders of immigration are the real humanitarians in the world, and the laissez-faire era of open borders without the welfare state was America's real humanitarian era.
Now I'm the first person to say that there are better ways to save the welfare state than curtailing immigration. If that's your worry, let immigrants come as guest workers - entitled to work but not collect welfare. At the same time, though, the presence of guest workers does reveal the hollowness of the standard rationales for the welfare state. It's hard to keep prating about how much you love "the poor" while insisting that the elderly Haitian who shines your shoes shouldn't get a dime.
