ABSTRACT
Employment was high, prosperity increased annually, and there was an ideological climate which favored a comprehensive welfare state that actively intervened in almost all aspects and corners of the lives of its citizens through subsidies, services, taxes, excises, and infinite streams of policies. The advocates of the comprehensive welfare state belong, as we saw before, to the New Class, also called the Knowledge Class—the elite of the post-industrial society. This orientation had much to do with the post-war situation in which all forces in society had to be summoned to rebuild and reconstruct the economy, the infrastructure, the organizations, and institutions of civil society. Strictly taken, only citizens of a particular nation-state were entitled to statutory services, like social security, education, housing, health care, and care of the elderly. The basic idea of a welfare state is that citizens bear a collective responsibility for the equally distributed social security and welfare of all.
