ABSTRACT
The provisions of a welfare state are to be seen as goods of which all legitimate recipients have a welfare right. And whereas the rights proclaimed in the American Declaration of Independence were option rights—rights, that is to say, giving individuals freedom to choose between the various courses of action or inaction they perceive as being open to them—welfare rights are rights to receive some good. There were, long before 1948, arrangements in many countries for the state provision, available to all citizens as such, of various kinds of welfare services—primarily educational services of the kinds and quantities specified in this UN Declaration. The whole experience, first of the US and then of the UK, makes it absolutely clear that the way to reduce racist discrimination to insignificance is not the way of criminalization and quangos such as the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission and its British equivalent the Commission for Racial Equality.
