ABSTRACT
When we raise the prospect of examining alternatives in the future of work and welfare, the US model stands out as a major experiment in returning work to the centre of society. The US model promotes private sector employment, business control in the labour market, a lean system of employee protection, and a lean welfare state.1 When policy analysts wrote about the American labour market or welfare policies a generation or two ago, none of them held up the American experiences of persistent unemployment and poverty amidst affluence as a success story. Times change. At the height of America’s employment boom in the 1990s, politicians, business, and the mainstream media all proclaimed the triumph of the model; it had restored full employment and successfully wound back welfare dependence by allowing the private economy to once again take the lead. Here are some examples. Commenting on the 2000 Davos Economic Summit, the editor-in-chief of The Sydney Morning Herald told us that ‘the primary message of Davos was that the US economic model . . . had triumphed over the regulated alternatives practised by continental Europe and Japan’.2 The Economist magazine also asked: ‘How far should Europe’s social model be protected from the “mercilessness” of the American version, given that such protection carries an economic cost?’3 The sense of triumph spread to American accomplishments in welfare reform. When President Clinton signed into law the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act in 1996, setting new limits on America’s welfare programs, we can only wonder whether tough new laws were what he intended when he promised in 1992 to ‘end welfare as we know it’ or whether his words were a cruel prophecy.4 The apparently recession-proof ‘new economy’ would now provide ‘welfare to work’ opportunities for millions outside the workforce and bring the era of ‘welfare dependence’ to a close.
