Blog Response 9/24/2008

Response to: Why Doesn’t the U.S. Have a European-Style Welfare State?

This essay has many intriguing implications and conclusions, but there are a few glaring problems in it that hinder these developments. Chiefly, the authors’ various explanations for why the United States is not a welfare state are merely stated but not fleshed out or supported. Currently, the article appears to mainly point out the fact that the United States is not a welfare state while not exploring the why of the situation. The conclusions seem reasonable enough and are easily testable, but either the editors have clipped out a critical chunk of the text or the authors simply did not include support for their conclusions. Another element that I feel could have been more fully explored is the relative success of government-backed redistribution versus charity-based assistance, as discovering the strengths and weaknesses of either method would be a valuable finding. Clearly the two differing programs have an inverse relationship (increasing government relief for the poor while raising taxes reduces charitable donations), but this correlation is not taken further. Finally, there are various differences between European countries and the United States that affect analysis of the welfare state. For instance, in countries with relatively stable populations, such as Sweden, welfare states should be easier to achieve, whereas in countries like America with large influxes of immigrants who may not pay as many taxes, welfare states are significantly harder to fund.
Still, the authors certainly demonstrate that a large contrast exists between the welfare states in Europe and the lack of a comparable structure in America. The finding that the American poor tend to be less well-off than their European peers is a particularly startling finding, which implies that the welfare state does maintain an advantage over the American model, albeit at the cost of a small hit to the income per capita average. The authors’ general investigation of how far-reaching the welfare state goes into the minds and institutions of a society is one of their other key contributions. With the threat of collapse of many large institutions like social security growing larger in the U.S., the findings of studies like this become more important and critical to policy makers and analysts.