Pros and Cons - Debbie Newman, Ben Woolgar 2014

Welfare state
Section A. Philosophy/political theory

The essence of the welfare state is that it provides benefits and services to everyone in a country, regardless of their ability to pay. It is founded on a belief that everyone deserves equal quality of certain essential public services, regardless of how much they earn. Objections can be both ideological (it rewards the undeserving) and practical (it provides poor outcomes). There are major definitional issues in this debate; teams should attempt to broadly agree on an expansive but imperfectly defined mass of things that the welfare state covers, ranging from schools to unemployment benefits.

Pros

[1] Society should provide free education (arguably including university education), healthcare, unemployment and sickness benefits, and old age pensions for all. These are fundamental rights in a humane society (and the yardstick of a civilised society is sometimes said to be how well it looks after its pensioners).

[2] State-owned and state-run welfare services are the property of the nation and therefore should be available to all. They are a physical manifestation of the responsibility of society to each of its members. Everyone pays tax, and so everyone should receive free welfare.

[3] In the interest of equality, there should be no private education, health services or pensions. The state should have a monopoly on the welfare state in order to ensure truly efficient welfare — through economies of scale and centralisation — which is also egalitarian. The best resources can be distributed within the public system rather than being creamed off for the elite who can afford private schools and private healthcare.

[4] More equal societies almost always do better on a wide range of metrics of wellbeing. Reduced stress and increased community cohesion lead to hugely positive outcomes for individuals, including longer life expectancies, reduced crime and greater reported levels of happiness.

Cons

[1] State welfare should be provided not as a matter of course, but only in cases of extreme need. The welfare state should function only as a safety net. Even in communist countries and in post-war Britain, where there was great enthusiasm for these ideas, economic realities have made free welfare for all an unrealisable dream.

[2] Society is responsible to all its members, but equally, its members should not all receive welfare if they can afford private healthcare, education and pensions. All state benefits should be means-tested so that only the truly needy receive them.

[3] It is fair that those who are hardworking and successful should be able to buy superior education and better healthcare, since these are not rights, but luxuries or privileges which may be paid for. Privatisation of healthcare, education and pensions means competition on the free market and therefore better and cheaper services.

[4] While welfare states may make many people better off, they do so by unacceptably lowering the quality of life of the most successful people within society. Those people should not be used as a social safety net for the failings of others; rather, they should be allowed to live in peace and enjoy the property they have worked for without state interference.

Possible motions

This House believes in the welfare state.

This House believes that only the desperately poor should receive state benefits.

Related topics

Capitalism v. socialism

Marxism

Privatisation

State pensions, ending provision of

Private schools

University education, free for all