Abstract
Conventional wisdom sees a major difference between Europe and America: European states are welfare states and spend mainly on “social” functions, whereas the American state devotes most of its expenditures to national defense, law and order, and other traditional functions of government. Theda Skocpol, a Harvard University political scientist, is representative of these beliefs when she claims that America is deprived of a European sort of welfare state: “The US,” she writes, “has never come close to having a ‘modern welfare state’ in the British, the Swedish, or any positive Western sense of the phrase.”1 If this is true, we may think that the European sovereign debt problem is due to their welfare state, and that such problem does not threaten America. But these beliefs are at best seriously misleading.
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Notes
Quoted in Alber (2010), p. 103.
The figures that follow are taken from OMB (2011b), Table 3.2.
This section relies on Lemieux (2012a).
Called NIPA, or “National Products and Income Accounts,” in the United States.
See UN (2004), pp. 61ff.
OECD (2011b). These averages are averages among countries, and are thus unweighted.
CBO (2011a), p. 36–37.
Alber (2010), p. 109. 9. CBO (2011a), p. 39.
See Bartlett (2012) and, for an elaboration of my argument, Lemieux (2012b).
Baldwin (2009), pp. 71 and 35.
Baldwin (2009).
De Rugy (2012).
See http://www.medhealthinsurance.com/vermont.htm and http://www.maine.gov/pfr/insurance/consumer/indhlth.htm (accessed December 23, 2011).
See http://healthvermont.gov/family/insurance/index.aspx (accessed December 23, 2011).
See http://www.massresources.org/health-reform.html (accessed December 23, 2011). 17. Alber (2010), p. 107.
Ibid., p. 104. Evidence to the same effect is presented in Alber and Gilbert (2010) and in Castles (2007). 19. Howard (1997).
Vatter (1979), p. 298.
Ibid., p. 307. 22. Quoted at many places, including http://millercenter.org/president/policy/
economic and http://www.answers.com/topic/employment-act-of-1946 (accessed December 20, 2011). 23. Quoted in Snowdon and Vane (2005), p. 146.
Kliesen and Thornton (2011), p. 2.
Lemieux (2008a), pp. 350–351.
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© 2013 Pierre Lemieux
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Lemieux, P. (2013). The Hidden Welfare State. In: The Public Debt Problem. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137313027_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137313027_4
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