Author Description

In the United States, Great Britain, Western Europe, and almost everywhere else in the developed world except Switzerland and Japan, a massive bureaucratic apparatus of state welfare has been built up since the Second World War. It has proven to be costly, inefficient, and grossly counterproductive. Everywhere governments are desperately seeking ways to reduce the size of state welfare. Efficiency, particularly in education and health care, must be improved. Above all, an alternative is urgently needed to the inherited cradle to grave welfare approach, which multiplies unemployment, generates dependency, and creates a fractious, subjugated underclass. Self Reliance has been written by four leading experts on welfare and social policy. Using British experience as a case study, the book analyzes the failings of state welfare and provides detailed practical proposals for reform. Specific parallels with the American situation, and implications for United States social policy are examined in a special opening essay by the editor. The key significance of this work for policy personnel and economists is that the authors argue for a structure that can be built up gradually out of the existing outmoded system. They detail methods by which this can be successfully accomplished despite financial constraints likely to be imposed by government officials.