Transforming the Welfare State: Towards a New Social Contract

by Jonathan Boston

‘Eighty years ago, New Zealand’s welfare state was envied by many social reformers around the world. Today it stands in need of urgent repair and renewal.’

One of our leading public policy thinkers asks: What might the contours of a revitalised ‘social contract’ for New Zealand look like?

Packed full of analysis, Jonathan Boston’s latest BWB Text directs us towards nothing less than a new political settlement. Wide-ranging reform of the welfare state is needed, Boston argues, if we are to address the challenges presented by economic, social and technological upheaval.

This quest is made all the more demanding – and pressing – by alarming ecological crises and the need for ‘the good society’ to place intergenerational responsibilities at its heart.

Genres: Nonfiction

264 pages, Paperback

Published November 1, 2019

Reviews

[Keen Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book reminds me of a conversation (well I was more the listener to a rant) with a baby boomer, complaining that she was faced with the hardship of having to sell one of her rental properties and how bitter and angry she was about this. This then led to an attack on people receiving unemployment benefit, though strangely she revealed that she had never been in receipt of benefits in her sixty odd years, so was oblivious to how much money they actually received.

But it just reminded me that this was yet another example of possibly the most spoiled, bratty, entitled, greedy, destructive and selfish generation in modern history and how so many of them remained oblivious to their many privileges and the damage they have inflicted upon every successive generation.

It has been said that the way a society treats its poorest and most vulnerable is indicative of its humanity, which would lead you to believe that Aotearoa is a country desperately lacking humanity. This book makes for fairly grim reading, showing the many areas in which NZ has failed its neediest, and the many areas it has to play catch up in terms of meaningfully addressing the widespread poverty in a country far more interested in tax cuts, car ownership and property accumulation.