ABSTRACT
This book began by emphasizing that welfare could be financed and provided in a variety of ways. It showed that the ways in which Britons pay for their welfare state have changed significantly in the past decade. The ultimate supply-side factor is the health of the economy. Modest long-term growth seems the best prospect we can look forward to in the next century. Modern economics has developed an increasing understanding of why some forms of social provision may be more efficient than the private market. Thus the government was right to claim that more money was being devoted to social policy, but social needs and expectations were outpacing it. In the 1970s social welfare spending was widely blamed for the economic crisis of the time. Social services took resources that could be better used to build up the productive growth-related sectors of the economy. They crowded out capital expenditure by laying first claim on the savings of the population.
