“Voucher” is one of those cool words, like “quantum” and “mobile”, that just makes everything better:
David Brooks columns are often difficult to grasp hold of, but I want to flag this accurate-but-misleading account of how Paul Ryan’s “budget roadmap” achieves large reductions in entitlement spending: “On the welfare-state side, he’d sweep away most subsidies to the middle and upper classes, like the tax exemption on employee health plans. He’d essentially voucherize federal benefits, like health care and Social Security, and increase federal subsidies for people down the income scale.”
Since Social Security is just checks mailed out by the government I don’t even know what voucherizing it would mean.
I think vouchers are fine, as long they are implemented in a Burkean way so as not to disrupt the complex adaptive system of the marketplace of ideas.