Mirage

“Or as Esping-Andersen (1996a: 3) put it eloquently already more than 15 years ago: The advanced Western nations’ welfare states were built to cater to an economy dominated by industrial mass production. In the era of the “Keynesian consensus” there was no perceived trade-off between social security and economic growth, between equality and efficiency. This consensus has disappeared because the underlying assumptions no longer obtain. Non-inflationary demand-led growth within one country appears impossible; full employment today must be attained via services, given industrial decline; the conventional male breadwinner family is eroding, fertility is falling, and the life course is increasingly non-standard.”
― Kees van Kersbergen, Comparative Welfare State Politics

“Welfare states come in different shapes and sizes; they are constructed on diverging conceptions of social rights and duties; some stress equality and solidarity, others freedom; and the range of policy objectives is vast and widely dissimilar.”
― Kees van Kersbergen, Comparative Welfare State Politics