ABSTRACT
The promotion of universal welfare rights and public services in the broader fields of education, health and culture have also been regarded as forms of social consumption in the 'people's home'. The ideas of the Social Democrats centred around erecting new public institutions to look after the consumer interest, maintaining a notion of individual consumer sovereignty but backed up by a state with regulatory powers which could be applied where necessary. The Price Control Act proposition laid out a programme for the state to realise the vision of increasing the general living standard in terms of consumption. The reason why the Price Control Act committee thought it necessary to implement permanent legislation was that it believed the threat of depression to be constant, and not solely related to war-time shortages. In relation to the establishment of the Norwegian Consumer Council, there was an apparent gender dimension to this growing recognition of the private consumer as public citizen.
