Welfare State Quotes

“A well-designed welfare state can actually encourage people to take chances with their jobs and be more, not less, open to changes.”
― Ha-Joon Chang, 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism

“The Labour party on the whole has not been a very effective opposition since the election, partly because it spent months and months electing its new leader. I think the Labour party should, for one thing, stress much more that for most people in the past 13 years, the period was not one of collapse into chaos but actually one where the situation improved, and particularly in areas such as schools, hospitals and a variety of other cultural achievements—so the idea that somehow or other it all needs to be taken down and ground into the dust is not valid. I think we need to defend what most people think basically needs defending and that is the provision of some form of welfare from the cradle to the grave.”
― Eric Hobsbawm

“If almost everyone is in favor of feeding the hungry, the politician may find it in his interest to do so. But, under those circumstances, the politician is unnecessary: some kind soul will give the hungry man a meal anyway. If the great majority is against the hungry man, some kind soul among the minority still may feed him—the politician will not.”
― David D. Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism

“This historic general election, which showed that the British are well able to distinguish between patriotism and Toryism, brought Clement Attlee to the prime ministership. In the succeeding five years, Labor inaugurated the National Health Service, the first and boldest experiment in socialized medicine. It took into public ownership all the vital (and bankrupted) utilities of the coal, gas, electricity and railway industries. It even nibbled at the fiefdoms and baronies of private steel, air transport and trucking. It negotiated the long overdue independence of India. It did all this, in a country bled white by the World War and subject to all manner of unpopular rationing and controls, without losing a single midterm by-election (a standard not equaled by any government of any party since). And it was returned to office at the end of a crowded term.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“You say, "There are men who have no money," and you apply the law. But the law is not a self-supplied fountain, whence every stream may obtain supplies independtly of society. Nothing can enter the public treasury, in favor of one citizen or one class, but what other citizens and other classes have been forced to send to it.”
― Bastiat, Frederick, The Law

“But one of the main reasons why Denmark does so well in international happiness surveys is the welfare state, as it reduces uncertainty, worries and stress in the population. You can say that Denmark is the happiest country in the world or you can say that Denmark is the least unhappy country in the world. The welfare state is really good (not perfect, but good) at reducing extreme unhappiness. Universal and free health care, free university education and relatively generous unemployment benefits go a long way towards reducing unhappiness.”
― Meik Wiking, The Little Book of Hygge: The Danish Way to Live Well

“When I was young I lived in several different countries, and we HAD to find work because there were no welfare state options open to us in those countries. And do you know what? We went out and found work. We had no choice.”
― Karl Wiggins, 100 Common Sense Policies to make BRITAIN GREAT again

“If a fairly substantial percentage of the money you and I work hard for is to be given to people too lazy to drag their arses out of bed at six o’clock in the morning, then we need assurance that they’re not spending our money on booze and drugs.”
― Karl Wiggins, 100 Common Sense Policies to make BRITAIN GREAT again

“Anybody who has been on Jobseeker's Allowance for more than six months must carry out some form of community work to earn their money”
― Karl Wiggins, 100 Common Sense Policies to make BRITAIN GREAT again

“Disabled people are now having to beg for small payments that once were held up as entitlements, and a way of making society fairer.”
― Mik Scarlet

“My short-term goals are to defend and even strengthen elements of state authority which, though illegitimate in fundamental ways, are critically necessary right now to impede the dedicated efforts to "roll back" the progress that has been achieved in extending democracy and human rights. State authority is now under severe attack in the more democratic societies, but not because it conflicts with the libertarian vision. Rather the opposite: because it offers (weak) protection to some aspects of that vision. Governments have a fatal flaw: unlike the private tyrannies, the institutions of state power and authority offer to the despised public an opportunity to play some role, however limited, in managing their own affairs. That defect is intolerable to the masters, who now feel, with some justification, that changes in the international economic and political order offer the prospects of creating a kind of "utopia for the masters," with dismal prospects for most of the rest. It should be unnecessary to spell out here what I mean. The effects are all too obvious even in the rich societies, from the corridors of power to the streets, countryside, and prisons. For reasons that merit attention but that lie beyond the scope of these remarks, the rollback campaign is currently spearheaded by dominant sectors of societies in which the values under attack have been realized in some of their most advanced forms, the English-speaking world; no small irony, but no contradiction either.”
― Noam Chomsky, Chomsky On Anarchism

“This was a talk to an anarchist conference, and in my view the libertarian movements have been very shortsighted in pursuing doctrine in a rigid fashion without being concerned about the human consequences. So it's perfectly proper… I mean, in my view, and that of a few others, the state is an illegitimate institution. But it does not follow from that that you should not support the state. Sometimes there is a more illegitimate institution which will take over if you do not support this illegitimate institution. So, if you're concerned with the people, let's be concrete, let's take the United States. There is a state sector that does awful things, but it also happens to do some good things. As a result of centuries of extensive popular struggle there is a minimal welfare system that provides support for poor mothers and children. That's under attack in an effort to minimize the state. Well, anarchists can't seem to understand that they are to support that. So they join with the ultra-right in saying "Yes, we've got to minimize the state," meaning put more power into the hands of private tyrannies which are completely unaccountable to the public and purely totalitarian.

It's kind of reminiscent of an old Communist Party slogan back in the early thirties "The worse, the better." So there was a period when the Communist Party was refusing to combat fascism on the theory that if you combat fascism, you join the social democrats and they are not good guys, so "the worse, the better." That was the slogan I remember from childhood. Well, they got the worse: Hitler. If you care about the question of whether seven-year-old children have food to eat, you'll support the state sector at this point, recognizing that in the long term it's illegitimate. I know that a lot of people find that hard to deal with and personally I'm under constant critique from the left for not being principled. Principle to them means opposing the state sector, even though opposing the state sector at this conjuncture means placing power into the hands of private totalitarian organizations who would be delighted to see children starve. I think we have to be able to keep those ideas in our heads if we want to think constructively about the problems of the future. In fact, protecting the state sector today is a step towards abolishing the state because it maintains a public arena in which people can participate, and organize, and affect policy, and so on, though in limited ways. If that's removed, we'd go back to a [...] dictatorship or say a private dictatorship, but that's hardly a step towards liberation.”
― Noam Chomsky, Chomsky On Anarchism

“This is not necessarily true, however, of measures merely restricting the allowed methods of production, so long as these restrictions affect all potential producers equally and are not used as an indirect way of controlling prices and quantities. Though all such controls of the methods of production impose extra costs (i.e., make it necessary to use more resources to produce a given output), they may be well worth while. To prohibit the use of certain poisonous substances or to require special precautions in their use, to limit working hours or to require certain sanitary arrangements, is fully compatible with the preservation of competition. The only question here is whether in the particular instance the advantages gained are greater than the social costs which they impose. Nor is the preservation of competition incompatible with an extensive system of social services — so long as the organization of these services is not designed in such a way as to make competition ineffective over wide fields.”
― Friedrich A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom

“Handouts are like trojan horses that seem nice at first, only to learn later of their fraudulence and how much damage and turmoil and suffering they cause. Instead of seeking a handout, seek a customer.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, The Wealth Reference Guide: An American Classic

“Now there is an attempt to reverse the history, to go back to the happy days when the principles of economic rationalism briefly reigned, gravely demonstrating that people have no rights beyond what they can gain in the labor market. And since now the injunction to "go somewhere else" won't work, the choices are narrowed to the workhouse prison or starvation, as a matter of natural law, which reveals that any attempt to help the poor only harms them—the poor, that is; the rich are miraculously helped thereby, as when state power intervenes to bail our investors after the collapse of the highly-toured Mexican "economic miracle," or to save failing banks and industries, or to bar Japan from American markets to allow domestic corporations to reconstruct the steel, automotive, and electronics industry in the 1980s (amidst impressive rhetoric about free markets by the most protectionist administration in the postwar era and its acolytes). And far more; this is the merest icing on the cake. But the rest are subject to the iron principles of economic rationalism, now sometimes called "tough love" by those who allocate the benefits.”
― Noam Chomsky, Chomsky On Anarchism

“When an "evil" becomes customary, it tends to lose the negative value put on it and in men's minds tends to become a "good." And so, we hear much these days in praise of the very kind of government which the Founding Fathers tried to prevent by their blueprint; that is, of a paternalistic establishment ruling for and over a subject people. A virtue has been made of what was once considered a vice. This transmutation of political values has been accompanied by a transmutation of moral values, as a matter of necessity; people who have no rights are presumably without free will; at least, there is no call for the exercise of free will (as in the case of a slave) when a paternalistic government assumes the obligations of living.
Why, for instance, should one be charitable when the government provides for the incompetent or the unfortunate? Why should one be honest when all that is necessary to "get by" is to obey the law? Why should one give thought to one's future when the matter can be left to a munificent government? And, with the government providing "free" schooling, including "free" lunches, even the parents' obligations to their children can be sloughed off.”
― Frank Chodorov, The Income Tax: Root of All Evil

“Jenseits der direktdemokratischen Gemeindeebenen entwickeln sich Demokratien immer und überall zum Umverteilungsstaat, zu Sozial- und Wohlfahrtsdiktaturen und zu Schacher- und Bestechungsdemokratien.”
― Roland Baader

“More often than not, the people around me weren’t simply deciding to give up. They were living in a culture of dependency that had been passed down from birth. My mother and grandmother gave in to the culture. And they expected me to figure out the best way to live on that same track, to game the system and not even try to escape.

My friend Ben agrees. 'Most of the time, what you see in the housing projects are generations of families,' he says. 'People accustomed to this lifestyle. It becomes comfortable, so they don’t move away, and even their children stay and raise kids in the same environment.' In neighborhoods like the ones where Ben and I grew up, there is no perceived incentive to advance. After all, the checks for housing and the food stamps and assistance arrive every month.”
― Gianno Caldwell, Taken for Granted: How Conservatism Can Win Back the Americans That Liberalism Failed

“First of all, the National Health Service, the Welfare State. What pride in it, what elation – and what confidence! The best thing was still the young doctors setting up group practices. Most but not all were socialists of various kinds. Memories of the thirties were close, documented by The Stars Look Down, Love on the Dole, The Citadel, novels which everyone had read. Whole families could be brought low because of the illness of one member. That terrible poverty in the 1930s, that cruel indifference to suffering on the part of Britain’s rulers – but now there was the welfare state. Pensions meant old age was no longer a threat. (Forty years later a government can say blandly, But we can’t afford it – and cut benefits that the citizens imagined they had been paying for. Has anyone ever thought of suing a government that reneges on its promises?”
― Doris Lessing, Walking in the Shade: Volume Two of My Autobiography--1949-1962

“I believe that, in Europe at least, we have made the mistake - politically speaking - of taking too much responsibility away from people. Citizens who once took responsibility for themselves have become dependents, demanding more of everything - subsidies, incomes, pensions. When the responsibility is taken away from them, people's aspirations dwindle, until finally we reach a state of zero growth and begin to descend into social chaos, a state of limbo. Welfare democracy is a dead-end street. What I always wanted was maximum responsibility for my own life. I've always had high expectations of myself. Others call it ambition.”
― Reinhold Messner, My Life at the Limit

“The United States incarnates a more cutthroat form of capitalism, while the Scandinavian countries, and to a lesser extent Germany, are the representatives of a more cuddly capitalism. According to this view, insofar as innovation at the technological frontier relies on strong monetary incentives, the countries that aim for frontier innovation should forgo the goals of insurance and equality: in other words, they should renounce “cuddly capitalism” in favor of a “cutthroat” form of capitalism. As for the countries who choose cuddly capitalism, they would have no alternative but growth by imitation of technologies invented by the frontier countries. The “cuddly” countries provide their citizens with greater equality and insurance, but their growth depends ultimately on the growth of the “cutthroat” countries, which, one might say, work for the benefit of the rest of the world.”
― Philippe Aghion, The Power of Creative Destruction: Economic Upheaval and the Wealth of Nations

“The market economy is not everything. It must find its place in a higher order of things which is not ruled by supply and demand, free prices, and competition. It must be firmly contained within an all-embracing order of society in which the imperfections of and harshness of economic freedom are corrected by law and in which man is not denied conditions of life appropriate to his nature.”
― Wilhelm Röpke, A Humane Economy: The Social Framework of the Free Market

“Omdat Vader ongeschoold werk deed en de enige kostwinner was, hadden we het economisch altijd krap, terwijl we zagen dat buren en familieleden die niet werkten of zwartwerkten naast hun uitkering, het net zo goed als wij of zelfs beter hadden. Moeder had van buurvrouwen begrepen dat hun kinderen gratis internet, gratis kleedgeld en zelfs een laptop kregen van de overheid. Hun oudere kinderen kregen studiefinanciering die ze niet hoefden terug te betalen als ze hun diploma haalden, vanwege het lage inkomen van de vader. Ze kregen ook huurtoeslag en zorgtoeslag. Sommigen waren op papier gescheiden, zodat de vrouw extra geld kon vangen vanwege haar alleenstaande moederschap of zoiets. Zo konden ze al hun vaste lasten betalen en op vakantie gaan met het geld van het zwarte werk en zelfs vastgoed kopen in Turkije. Moeder zei geregeld tegen Vader dat het in dit land nog eigenlijk gekkigheid is om als laaggeschoolde nog te werken, gezien het nauwelijks loonde.”
― Lale Gül, Ik ga leven

“He wanted to lower taxes on the poor and raise them on unearned income: “The process of the creation of new wealth is beneficial to the whole community. The process of squatting on old wealth though valuable is a far less lively agent.”
― William Manchester, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory, 1874-1932

“This body is a scrounger if it needs the state, a faker if it holds down a job.”
― Frances Ryan

“Property-owning democracy avoids [inequalities], not by redistributing income to those with less at the end of each period, so to speak, but rather by ensuring the widespread ownership of productive assets and human capital (educated abilities and trained skills) at the beginning of each period.”
― John Rawls

“Never mind the eighty percent of the population who fell below the poverty line. They couldn’t afford to complain and risk losing their dole.”
― Cliff Jones Jr., Dreck

“Don’t bite the hand that feeds you, as the saying went. Unless it’s also holding the key to your cage. That might actually be worth it.”
― Cliff Jones Jr., Dreck

“Only producers constitute a market - only men who trade products and services for products and services. In the role of producers, they represent a market’s supply; in the role of consumers, they represent a market’s demand. The law of supply and demand has an implicit subclause: that it involves the same people in both capacities. When this subclause is forgotten, ignored or evaded - you get the economic situation of today.
The man who consumes without producing is a parasite, whether is a welfare recipient or a rich playboy”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

“The man who will get up will be helped up; and the man who will not get up will be allowed to stay down. This rule may appear somewhat harsh, but in its general application and operation it is wise, just and beneficent.”
― Frederick Douglass