The Hidden Welfare State

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonard E. Burman ◽  
Joel Slemrod
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Income Tax ◽  
Actual Amount

Are a trillion dollars in middle-class entitlement programs really hidden in the tax code? Yes, give or take . . . The actual amount is in dispute for reasons we’ll get to, but many spending programs, big and small, are run through the income tax....

Class in Thatcherite Ideology and Rhetoric

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Hard Work ◽  
Language And Thought ◽  
Trade Unionism ◽  
Self Reliance ◽  
Classless Society ◽  
The Welfare State

This chapter examines Thatcherite rhetoric about class and individualism. Thatcher needed to distance herself from her own, narrow, upper-middle-class image; she also wanted to rid politics of class language, and thought that class was—or should be—irrelevant in 1980s Britain because of ‘embourgeoisement’. For Thatcher, ‘bourgeois’ was defined by particular values (thrift, hard work, self-reliance) and she wanted to use the free market to incentivize more of the population to display these values, which she thought would lead to a moral and also a prosperous society. Thatcherite individualism rested on the assumption that people were rational, self-interested, but also embedded in families and communities. The chapter reflects on what these conclusions tell us about ‘Thatcherism’ as a political ideology, and how these beliefs influenced Thatcherite policy on the welfare state, monetarism, and trade unionism. Finally, it examines Major’s rhetoric of the ‘classless society’ in the 1990s.

The emergence of a new society

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoff Payne
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Sufficient Conditions ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
White Collar ◽  
Service Industries ◽  
Detailed Consideration

Criticism of the ‘traditional/modern society’ dichotomy does not mean the Fisher-Clark thesis of long-term, universal shifts from agriculture into manufacturing, and then into service industries, can be ignored. Although ‘services’ is an unsatisfactory category, ‘occupational transition’ has shrunk manual, manufacturing employment and expanded white collar work. Because the parents’ generation were less middle class than their offspring are, this provided necessary but not sufficient conditions for rising upward mobility rates. This chapter illustrates British changes 1911-2011, with more detailed consideration of the period 1997-2014 showing the underlying occupational transition concept needs reformulation to allow for gender differences. It concludes that the expansion of the middle class following the Welfare State later constricts opportunities: advantaged children become the more advantaged new parents’ generation. The mobility gap begins to tighten.

Responsibility and the Big Society

2011 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 150-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antje Bednarek
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
Party Leadership ◽  
Good Society ◽  
Big Society ◽  
Class Distinction ◽  
The Welfare State

This paper focuses on the interplay between Conservative thought as evinced by the current Conservative Party leadership and the idea of responsibility, which is a central concern in the Big Society programme. I show that responsibility holds different meanings based on attitudes to work and the welfare state and that the differentiation in meaning map onto a working class/middle class distinction. I then argue that the ‘good society’ as it emerges from the Big Society idea would be a more stratified one that accepts large degrees of inequality. Leaving the conceptual plane, I then provide support for my argument with findings from qualitative research into the lifeworld of young Conservatives.

Gender and Professionalization in the Origins of the U.S. Welfare State: The Careers of Sophonisba Breckinridge and Edith Abbott, 1890–1935

1990 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 290-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robyn Muncy
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Public Welfare ◽  
Welfare Programs ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The U.S

In response to New Deal legislation, veteran reformer Molly Dewson exclaimed: “I cannot believe I have lived to see this day. It's the culmination of what us girls and some of you boys have been working for for so long it's just dazzling.” Historians have subsequently confirmed Dewson's judgment that female New Dealers had been hawking their agenda for a long time before Franklin Roosevelt's administration finally bought it. Indeed, Clarke A. Chambers, Susan Ware, and J. Stanley Lemons have carefully documented the activities of a large contingent of women who inaugurated their battle for public welfare programs during the Progressive Era (1890–1920), continued their fight through the 1920s—a decade that one activist called the “tepid, torpid years”—and stood ready with their programs when the Great Depression renewed the possibility of federal welfare legislation in the 1930s. Now we need an explanation for the continuity of this female commitment to public welfare programs: Why was it that middle-class women played such a prominent part in sustaining the Progressive Era's social welfare agenda into the 1930s.

scholarly journals Hemmafru eller gymnastikdirektör eller både och? Kvinnliga gymnastikdirektörer, GCI och folkhemmet 1932–1952

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-23
Author(s):  
Leif Yttergren
Keyword(s):  
Physical Education ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Physical Education Teachers ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Physical Education Teacher ◽  
Central Institute ◽  
Education Teacher ◽  
Occupational Career ◽  
The Welfare State

Housewife or Physical Education Teacher? Or Both? Female Physical Education Teachers and the Welfare State, 1932–1952The purpose of the article is to analyse the occupational careers and lifestyles of 32 female physical education teachers during the period 1932–1973. The results show that women could work both as physiotherapists and as physical education teachers. Many chose the former, which in Central Institute of Gymnastics’ (Gymnastiska centralinstitutet, GCI) own historical writing has been reduced in favor of the physical education teachers. The women came from the middle or upper middle class of society. They were around 20 years old when they started the two-year education at GCI, which attracted students from all over the country. They could combine marriage and children with work, even though it meant duplication and difficulty in bringing together the so-called “life puzzle.” Unlike many other women at this time, the physical education teachers chose the occupational career instead of becoming full time housewives. Their attitude can be explained by the occupational and caring character of the profession, but also with the strong loyalty that existed in the group and the GCI-spirit.

Economic and Political Liberation in Egypt and the Demise of State Feminism

1992 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mervat F. Hatem
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
State Sector ◽  
State Feminism ◽  
Economic Basis ◽  
Egyptian Women ◽  
The 1960S

In the late 1950s and the 1960s, an Egyptian welfare state was developed to provide the economic basis of a new social contract between the Nasser regime and its key class allies. Its main beneficiaries were the men and women of both the middle class and the labor aristocracy, who were to staff and run its expanding state sector. For Egyptian women, who were scorned by the pre-1952 states, the new welfare state offered explicit commitment to public equality for women. It contributed to the development of state feminism as a legal, economic, and ideological strategy to introduce changes to Egyptian society and its gender relations. In its own turn, state feminism contributed to the political legitimacy of Gamal Abdel Nasser's regime and its progressive credentials.

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