Never Enough: America's Limitless Welfare State

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Overview

Since the beginning of the New Deal, American liberals have insisted that the government must do more-much more-to help the poor, to increase economic security, to promote social justice and solidarity, to reduce inequality, and to mitigate the harshness of capitalism. Nonetheless, liberals have never answered, or even acknowledged, the corresponding question: What would be the size and nature of a welfare state that was not contemptibly austere, that did not urgently need new programs, bigger budgets, and a ...
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Never Enough: America's Limitless Welfare State

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More About This Book

Overview

Since the beginning of the New Deal, American liberals have insisted that the government must do more-much more-to help the poor, to increase economic security, to promote social justice and solidarity, to reduce inequality, and to mitigate the harshness of capitalism. Nonetheless, liberals have never answered, or even acknowledged, the corresponding question: What would be the size and nature of a welfare state that was not contemptibly austere, that did not urgently need new programs, bigger budgets, and a broader mandate? Even though the federal government's outlays have doubled every eighteen years since 1940, liberal rhetoric is always addressed to a nation trapped in Groundhog Day, where every year is 1932, and none of the existing welfare state programs that spend tens of billions of dollars matter, or even exist.

Never Enough explores the roots and consequences of liberals' aphasia about the welfare state's ultimate size. It assesses what liberalism's lack of a limiting principle says about the long-running argument between liberals and conservatives, and about the policy choices confronting America in a new century. Never Enough argues that the failure to speak clearly and candidly about the welfare state's limits has grave policy consequences. The worst result, however, is the way it has jeopardized the experiment in self-government by encouraging Americans to regard their government as a vehicle for exploiting their fellow-citizens, rather than as a compact for respecting one another's rights and safeguarding the opportunities of future generations.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781594035845
  • Publisher: Encounter Books
  • Publication date: 10/9/2012
  • Pages: 360
  • Sales rank: 536,618
  • Product dimensions: 6.00 (w) x 8.90 (h) x 1.00 (d)

Meet the Author

William Voegeli is a visiting scholar at the Henry Salvatori Center at Claremont McKenna College, and a contributing editor to The Claremont Review of Books. His reviews and articles have also appeared in City Journal, First Things, In Character, the Los Angeles Times, National Review, and The New Criterion. From 1988 to 2003 he was a program officer at the John M. Olin Foundation. He lives in Claremont, CA.

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Table of Contents

Foreword ix

Preface to the Paperback Edition xix

Introduction: The Search for Sufficiency 1

Chapter 1 America's Welfare State in Numbers 14

Chapter 2 America's Welfare State in Theory 56

Chapter 3 Liberalism's Continuing Inability to Make Sense 94

Chapter 4 Liberalism's Continuing Inability to Make Payroll 154

Chapter 5 Conservatism's Continuing Inability to Make a Difference 202

Conclusion: Where Do Progressives Want to Progress To and What Do Conservatives Want to Conserve? 272

Acknowledgments 281

Notes 283

Index 311

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