scholarly journals An Argument and an Outline for a New Employment Scheme

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Henning Hansen ◽  
Jens Lind ◽  
Iver Hornemann Møller

<div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p>Liberalism is celebrating triumphs in these years. As faith in the welfare state and Keynesianism began to crack in the 1970s, capitalist principles were revitalised and the old virtues and dogmas were found and dusted. Now all that restrained the free competition in the market were considered a danger to the growth and the welfare. The impact of trade unions on wage formation should be limited, the welfare state should be reduced, and ‘modernised’ and the incentive structure strengthened by reducing social policy standards. Unemployment was again considered a natural part of the economy where individual choices were crucial to whether you were unemployed or not: lower your wage claims and you would probably get a job. </p><p>As a part of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, a consensus between the representatives of capital and labor had to be invented. An ideal model for European employment policy should be found to supplement the strengthening of the internal market and the canonisation of the free movement of capital, labor, goods, and services. The result was the so-called social dimension, which could act as a counter weight for the employees. The Danish labor market policy from the 1960s became the prototype of the European employment policy and was called flexicurity, and from the late 1990s until the crisis’ breakout in 2008, flexicurity celebrated triumphs as a political-ideological construction for a common reference model (Larsson 1998).</p></div></div></div>

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Henning Hansen ◽  
Jens Lind ◽  
Iver Hornemann Møller

Liberalism is celebrating triumphs in these years. As faith in the welfare state and Keynesianism began to crack in the 1970s, capitalist principles were revitalised and the old virtues and dogmas were found and dusted. Now all that restrained the free competition in the market were considered a danger to the growth and the welfare. The impact of trade unions on wage formation should be limited, the welfare state should be reduced, and ‘modernised’ and the incentive structure strengthened by reducing social policy standards. Unemployment was again considered a natural part of the economy where individual choices were crucial to whether you were unemployed or not: lower your wage claims and you would probably get a job. (...)


2021 ◽  
pp. 152-172
Author(s):  
Willem Adema ◽  
Peter Whiteford

This chapter contributes to the discussion of public and private social welfare by drawing together recent information on these different ways of providing social benefits. It presents data on public social expenditure for 2015–17 and accounts for the impact of the tax system and private social expenditure to develop indicators on net social expenditure for 2015. The chapter shows that conventional estimates of gross public spending differ significantly from estimates of net public spending and net total social expenditure, leading to an incorrect measurement and ranking of total social welfare effort across countries.Just as importantly, the fact that total social welfare support is incorrectly measured implies that the outcomes of welfare state support may also be incorrectly measured. Thus, the main objectives of the chapter include considering the implications of this more comprehensive definition of welfare state effort for analysis of the distributional impact of the welfare state and for an assessment of the efficiency and incentive effects of different welfare state arrangements.


Author(s):  
Daniel Fernando Carolo ◽  
José António Pereirinha

AbstractThis paper presents a data series on social expenditure in Portugal for the period 1938-2003. The series was built with the aim of identifying and characterizing the most significant phases in the process leading up to the current welfare state system in this country. The establishment of a social insurance (Previdência) in 1935 was one of the founding pillars of the Estado Novo (New State). Reforms to Social Welfare (Previdência Social) in 1962, while in the full throes of the New State, policy measures taken after the revolution of 1974 and a new orientation for social policy following the accession of Portugal to the European Economic Community (EEC) in the mid-1980s brought about significant transformations in the institutional organizational structure that provided welfare and conferred social rights in Portugal. To understand this process, knowledge is needed of the transformations to the institutional structures governing the organizations that provided welfare, welfare coverage in terms of the type of benefit and the population entitled to social risk protection, the magnitude of spending on benefits associated with these risks, as well as how benefits were allocated between the institutions. We built a data series for the period 1938-1980, which can then be matched to data already published in the OECD Social Expenditure Database from 1980 onwards. As a result, a consistent series for social expenditure from 1938 to 2003 was obtained. The methodology used to create the series enabled us to measure the impact of the variation in population coverage for social risks and the average generosity of benefits on the relative share of social expenditure in GDP. We present an interpretive reading for the full period, covering the New State and the Democracy from 1974, of the process of building the welfare state in Portugal.


1998 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 507-524 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARK DRAKEFORD

This article considers the current state of help with funeral expenses in Britain. It argues that assistance has been progressively and deliberately eroded to the point where the famous ‘from the cradle to the grave’ protection of the welfare state has been removed from increasing numbers of poor people. The article sets these developments within the context of the contemporary British funeral industry, with emphasis upon its treatment of less-well-off consumers. The changing nature of social security provision for funeral expenses is traced in detail, including the actions of the incoming 1997 Labour government. This article investigates the public health role of local authorities in the case of burials, concluding that such services are insufficiently robust to meet the new weight placed upon them. The article ends with a consideration of the impact which these different changes produce in the lives of individuals upon whom they have an effect.


2009 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Godwin ◽  
Colin Lawson

This paper explores the impact of the decision to make the Working Tax Credit (WTC) payable via the employer, until March 2006. A unique survey shows the unequal distribution of compliance costs across firms and industries. It also suggests that the arrangement had some unanticipated results, and may have damaged the effectiveness of the WTC. Some employers' compliance costs may have been shifted to employees. So from a social policy perspective administration is policy – the delivery system affects outcomes. However the switch to payments through HMRC from April 2006 does not remove all compliance costs from employers.


2004 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 259-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus M. L. Crepaz ◽  
Ann W. Moser

This study examines the determinants of public expenditures in advanced market economies by simultaneously assessing the impact of domestic political institutions and globalization. A distinction is made between collective veto points and competitive veto points, demonstrating that not all veto points have restrictive effects. It is shown that public expenditures are significantly and positively affected by collective veto points, whereas the oppositeis true for competitive veto points thereby indicating that not all veto points are created equal. In addition to veto points, the effects of globalization are also assessed revealing that globalization is exerting little reform pressures on the welfare state with strong evidence indicating that more globalization buoys public expenditures. Current disbursements and social transfers are both positively influenced by globalization. These findings suggest that domestic political institutions continue to shape policy trajectories in this purported global age.


1982 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vicente Navarro

This article analyzes the current crisis of the international capitalist order and its consequences for the welfare state policies of developed and underdeveloped capitalist countries. Special emphasis is given to the impact of the crisis on state health care policies in those countries. The first part discusses the response of capital and labor to the crisis, with special focus on capital's political and ideological interventions in the areas of production, consumption, and legitimation; and their realization as health care policies. The second part analyzes the major capitalist responses to the crisis—the “market” and the “social contract” strategies—and their consequences for health care policy. The last part critically evaluates the call for a new economic order and its limitations.


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