ABSTRACT
A welfare state is one in which very extensive health and educational services are provided, in which there is also very extensive provision of financial and other forms of support for those deemed unable adequately to provide for themselves and their dependents, and in which by far the greater part of all this provision is financed out of taxation either immediate or, in the shape of government borrowing, deferred. All inquiry into the "shameful and lamentable conclusions" that may follow from the development of a state welfare system has to start from a recognition of the logically necessary truth of the Law of Unintended Rewards. The ideal of equality and social justice is perhaps best conceived as the justifying ideology of the welfare state and of all those who today claim the social democratic name. The extent of consequent demoralization in the labor force is not revealed by any official statistics.
