my name is michael tanner. i'm a senior fellow here at the cato institute. of course, i'm not the person you are really here to see. we are here, actually, to talk about new book by kevin williamson, "the end is near" it's going to be awesome. we have kevin, who will be talking to us a little bit and talking about the book in a few moments. we'll have some commentary on

my name is michael tanner. i'm a senior fellow here at the cato institute. of course, i'm not the person you are really here to see. we are here, actually, to talk about new book by kevin williamson, "the end is near" it's going to be awesome. we have kevin, who will be talking to us a little bit and talking about the book in a few moments. we'll have some commentary on that from nick of reason.com and reason tv. who will have a few things to say about it, i'm sure. if you look around right now, you can see pretty obviously, i think, that the major institution of the modern welfare state are beginning show their strains, let's say. after all, you look at the fact that we have, right now, at the federal level 126 separate federal antipoverty programs. they cost about $866 billion a year. and yet, poverty rates go up. we spend more every year on education, more federal education programs, more federal education dollars, and test scores go nowhere. we spend more money on social security and medicare as the programs careen toward bankruptcy and social security d

i name is michael tanner and i'm a senior fellow here at the cato in the two, but of course i'm not the person who's really here to see. we are here to talk about new book by kevin williamson, "the end is near and it's going to be awesome." we have kevin talking to us a little bit about his book in a few moments and then we will have some commentary on not from nick gillespie of a reason.com and recent tv will have a few things to say i'm sure. if you look around right now, you can see pretty obviously that the major institutions of the modern welfare state are beginning to show their strength after all, you can look at the fact we have right now at the federal level 126 separate federal antipoverty programs at a cost of $860 billion a year. and yet, poverty rates go up. we spend more every year on education, more federal education programs, more federal education dollars and test scores go nowhere. we spend more money on social security and medicare as these programs careened towards bankruptcy and yet social security delivers a much lower in declining rate of return to young people le