Growing Public: Social Spending and Economic Growth since the Eighteenth Century

Taxes and transfers have been debated for centuries, but only recently are we able to see the total picture of the evolution of social spending. This book examines the question of whether social policies that redistribute income impose constraints on economic growth. Peter Lindert argues that, contrary to the intuition of many economists and the ideology of many politicians, social spending has contributed to, rather than inhibited, economic growth. Also Available...Growing Public, Volume 1: The Story