If you’re reading this in a WEIRD country, congratulations: you’re one of the luckiest humans to have ever lived. Much can be (and has been) said about what brought this unlikely progress, and we’re the benefactors. One substantial part of our fortune is an enlightened economic policy. In the 18th-century, our forebears acquired an appreciation for markets, and here we are. People look at our lot and want to attribute some of this raising of living standards to government policy: without question, the modern welfare state played a role, didn’t it? In reality, welfare primarily helps the old, not the poor. Far more poverty alleviation is attributable to immigration.
Perhaps the government should at least get credit for preventing discrimination in the labour market? A counterfactual Britain without employment regulation would supposedly have fewer Asian nurses and South American cleaners. This argument strains credulity and doesn’t hold up to evidence that even when the government makes it illegal to hire immigrants (because they didn’t get here correctly), people still hire them.