The Welfare State: Pensions, Health, and Education

Volume 6 of The Collected Works of Arthur Seldon examines the failure of state-supported welfare programs to benefit the people most in need of help. The eight articles and one book in this volume encompass almost forty years of criticism of the welfare state.

Seldon argues that the welfare state cannot, in the long run, solve the problem of poverty. It is driven by misguided egalitarian views which make it universalist, providing benefits for the middle classes as well as the poor. Because...