Dan Mitchell?s Cato colleague Chris Edwards (they?ve co-written a book on global tax competition) offers this disturbing news:
The number of federal subsidy programs has just topped 2,000. That represents a 40-percent increase in a decade and a rough doubling of federal hand-out programs since the mid-1980s.
There is a federal subsidy program for every year that has passed since Emperor Augustus held sway in Rome. Whether we are more successful than Cicero and Cato the Younger in battling to retain our limited-government republic remains to be seen.