The idea of the welfare state took root in the 1840s. One of its early critics, the French publicist Frederic Bastiat, prophetically defined it as the great fiction through which everybody tries to live at the expense of everybody else. But Bastiat and his friends were not able to stem the tide of history. The modern welfare state was born as an institution in the 1870s. From there it spread rapidly all over the Western world. We are now nearing the end of the 1980s. Over a century of welfare statism lies behind us. For some it has been a century of rising living standards, more social justice and the promise of economic security for all. That vision has taken some bad beatings lately, but it is still part of the conventional wisdom. But this conventional wisdom may be more conventional than wise. Some economists are beginning to ask whether living standards rose thanks to the welfare state, or in spite of the welfare state. Disentangling the causes of a complex phenomenon like the condition of modern society is not an easy task. For others, the experience of the past century is dominated by two world wars and a variety of other conflicts. Many historians have noted that the first half of this century was the most bloody period in the history of mankind, both in absolute terms and as far as the ratio of war victims to total population is concerned. All recent explanations of the world wars assign an important role to the policies of the welfare state, its imperialism, protectionism and inflationism. The paper examines in general terms some of the moral and political ideas that seem to underlie our political practices today. The author analyzes whether the government has the right – the moral right – to do the things it does. This question, the author believes, is not raised often enough. Public policy debate consists usually of two or more parties each urging the government to adopt a different policy. All kinds of arguments are adduced in favor of the various positions: it promotes social justice, it is efficient, it is expedient, it will reduce unemployment, it will boost exports, etc. But all these policies require sacrifices – sacrifices to be made by individual persons. They are to be taxed, they are to be restricted in their freedom. And this does raise a number of moral problems.
