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As I and others have pointed out, all of the risks that welfare state supporters say we need government “social insurance” to protect ourselves against — accident, illness, old age, job loss — can and were addressed privately and voluntarily before the creation of the welfare state: through private savings, insurance, informal help, formal charity and, notably, mutual aid societies.
In his essay, Mike Konczal starts by challenging the view that the American welfare state started with the New Deal. If he can convince us that America was always a welfare state, then not only is it wrong to point to the period before the 1930s as evidence that free enterprise works — but the very notion that American ideals clash with welfare state ideals becomes harder to swallow.
In this episode of The Debt Dialogues, I talk with John Cochrane, the AQR Capital Management Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
“Ideology is as much about understanding the past as shaping the future.” So starts Mike Konczal’s recent Democracy Journal article, “The Voluntarism Fantasy.” And on this point, he couldn’t be more right.
In this new weekly podcast series, The Debt Dialogues, Don Watkins will be talking to a diverse range of guests about the welfare state crisis and what to do about it.
