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The High Cost of Good Intentions

3,850 views · Published 7 November 2017 · 1:02:40 · Indexed 22 September 2026

Channel: Hoover Institution · 2017 · News & Politics

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The Hoover Institution hosted "The High Cost of Good Intentions" on Wednesday, November 1, 2017 from 12:00pm - 1:30pm EST. 

The Hoover Institution & Director of Washington, D.C. Programs Michael Franc welcomed Hoover Senior Fellow John F. Cogan for a discussion of his new book: The High Cost of Good Intentions: A History of U.S. Federal Entitlement Programs. 

Federal entitlement programs are strewn throughout the pages of U.S. history, springing from the noble purpose of assisting people who are destitute through no fault of their own. Yet as federal entitlement programs have grown, so too have their inefficiency and their cost. Neither tax revenues nor revenues generated by the national economy have been able to keep pace with their rising growth, bringing the national debt to a record peacetime level.

The High Cost of Good Intentions is the first comprehensive history of these federal entitlement programs. Combining economics, history, political science, and law, John F. Cogan reveals how the creation of entitlements brings forth a steady march of liberalizing forces that cause entitlement programs to expand. His work provides a unifying explanation for the evolutionary path that nearly all federal entitlement programs have followed over the past two hundred years, tracing both their shared past and the financial risks they pose for future generations.

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