Государство благосостояния: великодушие или хищничество?

Вопросы теоретической экономики. 2024. № 4. С. 22–44.

Zaostrovtsev A. P.

Th e article is devoted to the origin, nature and problems of the welfare state. Its consequences are shown. It generates an imbalance in public fi nances, infl ated social obligations that will be impossible to fulfi ll in the future. At present, it exists at the expense of the exploitation of future generations, some of whose representatives have not yet been born. Th e protective state (the “night watchman”) is being displaced by the distributing state: growing funding for social programs leaves less and less money for defense and other primary functions of the state. Th e welfare state attracts migrants from backward countries, who are oft en focused not on fi nding a place in the labor market, but on receiving benefi ts. At the same time, a confl ict of cultures arises and worsens, and the national identity of the countries receiving migration fl ows is in danger. Th e concept of a predatory state is considered in relation to the welfare state. Its predatory nature manifested itself in its displacement of civil society as the organizer of the social sphere. Th e modern welfare state, providing universal social services for all citizens of the country, was born as a result of two world wars, from the involvement of the civilian masses in them and the necessity to ensure their existence. Th is quality of the mobilization economy did not become a thing of the past aft er World War II - national systems of providing social benefi ts and social protection were only developing. Th ere was an interweaving of the “ratchet eff ect”, when post-war expenditures do not decrease to the pre-war level, with the “path dependence”, when social norms that appeared in wartime do not disappear in peacetime. As a result, there are grounds to consider the welfare state as a product of the creeping socialist revolution of the bureaucracy

Keywords: война, государство благосостояния, хищническое государство, migration, welfare state, path dependence, эффект колеи, ratchet effect, Миграция, discretionary and compulsory spending, predatory state,, mass war, дискретные и обязательные расходы, эффект храповика