The War on Poverty didn’t conquer poverty, it entrenched it, fostering a permanent underclass through dependency and family breakdown. The Inflation Reduction Act did no such thing, it fueled more spending and inflationary pressure. The Patriot Act was anything but patriotic, erecting a vast, permanent surveillance state that eroded civil liberties in the name of security. Time and again, these grandly named “Acts” deliver the precise opposite of their promises. Government interventions routinely ignore second-order consequences, distorted incentives, unintended behaviors, and cascading failures, leaving us with more problems than we started with. Perhaps it’s time for Washington to step back from micromanaging the economy and people’s lives, before the unintended damage grows even worse.
