Changing the Social Ethos is the Key

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John Roemer - Changing the Social Ethos is the Key.pdf

12/fs/qj/8k/n-/5v/f/b0bsl79jx59rwtw7lr978psshbdk7tsxlb1w4wlpmfhprmt/John_Roemer_-_Changing_the_Social_Ethos_is_the_Key.pdf

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I envision a sequential and incremental process, whereby increased social insurance generates a change in citizen preferences in a solidaristic direction, which then induces still more social insurance through the democratic process. This is the process, I conjecture, that brought Europe, and especially northern Europe, to where it is today, where countries have a significantly more egalitarian distribution of final income than in the United States, and yet where labor productivity remains approximately as high as it is here.

My argument is not that citizens immediately become more solidaristic because of a crisis — it is that with common risk exposures, it becomes the self-interest of all to implement universal insurance. The Depression in the U.S. placed a large number of citizens in the same boat; similarly, the Second World War significantly reduced wealth differences in Europe, thus making the former well-to-do much more similar to the former poor with regard to risk exposure, which facilitated the passage of social insurance.

I do not wish to imply that this is the only reason that crises induce social reform. Class struggle may also be magnified due to crises: for instance, those who fought and risked their lives as soldiers in World War II returned with a feeling of entitlement and became more demanding of redistribution and welfare-state benefits. This was certainly important in the post-war period in Europe. A more nuanced version of my thesis is that crises tend to homogenize the risk exposures of the working and middle classes, who then form a sufficient majority to pass social insurance, even should the capitalist class oppose it.

Author

John Roemer. July 2009.