Cato Podcast

A new Cato survey reveals that Americans overwhelmingly support Social Security while fundamentally misunderstanding its structure, finances, and long-term viability. Romina Boccia and Emily Ekins explore how myths about personal accounts, proportional benefits, and trust-fund solvency shape public opinion — and why ignorance makes meaningful reform politically elusive. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Cato's Ian Vásquez and the Fraser Institute's Matt Mitchell walk through the 2025 edition of the Human Freedom Index, documenting a worldwide decline in economic, civil, and personal freedoms that began before the pandemic and sharply accelerated after it. They explain how populism, authoritarian emergency powers, trade restrictions, and speech controls have left nine in ten people living in less free societies, and why the recovery remains uneven and fragile. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Cato's Michael Cannon and the Center for Long-Term Care Reform's Stephen Moses examine how Medicaid’s long-term-care eligibility rules let middle- and upper-middle-class households shelter assets and shift costs onto taxpayers, driving up spending and lowering quality for the poor. Drawing on Moses’s new Cato paper Better Long-Term Care for Billions Less, they explain how perverse incentives, generous exemptions, and weak estate recovery undermine private planning and inflate a program already consuming one-third of Medicaid’s budget. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Cato Institute's Katherine Thompson and Josh Shifrinson join Justin Logan to dissect the most contentious passages of the National Security Strategy, including its warnings about European “civilizational erasure,” its revived Monroe Doctrine instincts, and the absence of military escalation language on China. The discussion weighs whether this NSS truly reflects restraint and realism or simply refines old habits under a new rhetorical wrapping. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Cato Institute's Jeff Singer and Michael Fox mark Repeal Day by examining how alcohol prohibition and the modern drug war share the same destructive logic: criminalizing peaceful people, fueling black markets, corrupting law enforcement incentives, and empowering violent traffickers. Drawing on real-world examples of overdose deaths, civil forfeiture, and policing excesses, they argue for a consistent, liberty-based framework that treats drug users with the same legal respect afforded to alcohol consumers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.