![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
♠
The election of the conservative Sarkozy in France has inspired George Will to discuss the quandaries of French political economics in terms of the basic mechanics of capitalism. Since it's been a while since I've done an Economics 101 number, I will keep a large excerpt of this column, which is titled "Is France Willing to Work?" And I'll just briefly note that a little state welfarism is arguably needed to better distribute the fruits of wealth creation, and thus liberal societies are left to deal with this issue of balancing market forces and democratic forces to try to secure that greatest happiness for the greatest number, in priniciple.
___ ___ ___
Two decades ago, the sociologist Daniel Bell wrote about "the cultural contradictions of capitalism" to express this worry: Capitalism flourishes because of virtues that its flourishing undermines. Its success requires thrift, industriousness and deferral of gratifications, but that success produces abundance, expanding leisure and the emancipation of appetites, all of which weaken capitalism's moral prerequisites.
The cultural contradictions of welfare states are comparable. Such states presuppose economic dynamism sufficient to generate investments, job creation, corporate profits and individuals' incomes from which comes tax revenue needed to fund entitlements.
But welfare states produce in citizens an entitlement mentality and a low pain threshold. That mentality inflames appetites for more entitlements, broadly construed to include all government benefits and protections that contribute to welfare understood as material well-being, enhanced security and enlarged leisure.
The low pain threshold causes a ruinous flinch from the rigors, insecurities, uncertainties and dislocations inherent in the creative destruction of dynamic capitalism. The flinch takes the form of protectionism, regulations and other government-imposed inefficiencies that impede the economic growth that the welfare state requires.
So welfare states are, paradoxically, both enervating and energizing -- and infantilizing. They are enervating because they foster dependency; they are energizing because they aggravate an aggressive (think of burning Peugeots) sense of entitlement; they are infantilizing because it is infantile to will an end without willing the means to that end, and people who desire welfare states increasingly desire relief from the rigors necessary to finance them.
-- George F. Will for The Washington Post
xXx
The election of the conservative Sarkozy in France has inspired George Will to discuss the quandaries of French political economics in terms of the basic mechanics of capitalism. Since it's been a while since I've done an Economics 101 number, I will keep a large excerpt of this column, which is titled "Is France Willing to Work?" And I'll just briefly note that a little state welfarism is arguably needed to better distribute the fruits of wealth creation, and thus liberal societies are left to deal with this issue of balancing market forces and democratic forces to try to secure that greatest happiness for the greatest number, in priniciple.
___ ___ ___
Two decades ago, the sociologist Daniel Bell wrote about "the cultural contradictions of capitalism" to express this worry: Capitalism flourishes because of virtues that its flourishing undermines. Its success requires thrift, industriousness and deferral of gratifications, but that success produces abundance, expanding leisure and the emancipation of appetites, all of which weaken capitalism's moral prerequisites.
The cultural contradictions of welfare states are comparable. Such states presuppose economic dynamism sufficient to generate investments, job creation, corporate profits and individuals' incomes from which comes tax revenue needed to fund entitlements.
But welfare states produce in citizens an entitlement mentality and a low pain threshold. That mentality inflames appetites for more entitlements, broadly construed to include all government benefits and protections that contribute to welfare understood as material well-being, enhanced security and enlarged leisure.
The low pain threshold causes a ruinous flinch from the rigors, insecurities, uncertainties and dislocations inherent in the creative destruction of dynamic capitalism. The flinch takes the form of protectionism, regulations and other government-imposed inefficiencies that impede the economic growth that the welfare state requires.
So welfare states are, paradoxically, both enervating and energizing -- and infantilizing. They are enervating because they foster dependency; they are energizing because they aggravate an aggressive (think of burning Peugeots) sense of entitlement; they are infantilizing because it is infantile to will an end without willing the means to that end, and people who desire welfare states increasingly desire relief from the rigors necessary to finance them.
-- George F. Will for The Washington Post
