Economic Theory - General & Miscellaneous, General & Miscellaneous Social Policies, Macroeconomics - General & Miscellaneous, Privatization, Welfare - Service & Policies

Self-Reliance: Reforming Welfare in Advanced Societies

Name: Self-Reliance: Reforming Welfare in Advanced Societies
Author: David Marsland
ISBN: 9781560002116

by David Marsland

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Overview

In the United States, Great Britain, Western Europe, and almost everywhere else in the developed world except Switzerland and Japan, a massive bureaucratic apparatus of state welfare has been built up since the Second World War. It has proven to be costly, inefficient, and grossly counterproductive. Everywhere governments are desperately seeking ways to reduce the size of state welfare. Efficiency, particularly in education and health care, must be improved. Above all, an alternative is urgently needed to the inherited cradle to grave welfare approach, which multiplies unemployment, generates dependency, and creates a fractious, subjugated underclass. Self Reliance has been written by four leading experts on welfare and social policy. Using British experience as a case study, the book analyzes the failings of state welfare and provides detailed practical proposals for reform. Specific parallels with the American situation, and implications for United States social policy are examined in a special opening essay by the editor. The key significance of this work for policy personnel and economists is that the authors argue for a structure that can be built up gradually out of the existing outmoded system. They detail methods by which this can be successfully accomplished despite financial constraints likely to be imposed by government officials.

About the Author, David Marsland

David Marsland is professor of sociology at the University of Buckingham and series editor of European Social Policy for Transaction Publishers. Some of his books include Seeds of Bankruptcy and Welfare or Welfare State?

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Booknews

Four analysts, using the British experience as a case study, pick apart the failings of state welfare in England, the United States and other Western nations since World War II and propose ways to reform the system, which the editor compares to an "evil jinnee" out to "subvert our liberties." The analysts argue for a privatized structure of capital pools, which could be built up gradually out of the existing, outmoded system and could be accomplished despite current financial constraints. No index. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)