Abstract
Professor Frowen, in the previous chapter, has considered ways in which a government might seek to meet the escalating costs of social welfare. He argues that the affluent are unlikely to subsidize such costs by themselves contributing voluntarily to health care, schooling, and so on, while at the same time fully supporting public provision for the less affluent. Therefore he looks to economic expansion to generate sufficient resources to fund adequate social provision. Economic growth, runs the argument, will (subject to certain conditions such as constant tax rates) increase tax revenue even as it lessens the burden of supporting the unemployed, so freeing resources for more constructive use.
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Notes and References
Roger Haight, Dynamics of Theology, New York, Paulist Press, 1990, p.1.
Peter Calvocoressi, The British Experience 1945–75, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1978. The author remarks earlier that classical free market theory would rule out such a clash between public interest and private profit, whereas a socialist polity would emphasize it.
Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1983. His discussion of what money can and cannot buy begins on p. 100. I suppose that my use of Walzer signifies my belief that money is too important to be left to economists.
Naturally, cultural practices vary. As Walzer points out, in cultures where the line between private and public is hazy, for example, where political office has not fully emerged as an autonomous good, the gift relationship between office-holders and clients might be socially ratified. So cross-cultural ethical pronouncements are always hazardous. Interestingly, though, the British press tends to judge other cultures more confidently than its own: as when it charges officials of other countries with corruption for accepting inducements from, say, a British business executive, without accusing the executive of corruption for offering them.
Cited in Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation, Boston, Beacon Press, 1944, p. 118.
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© 1997 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Turner, F. (1997). Choking on Growth. In: Askonas, P., Frowen, S.F. (eds) Welfare and Values. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25547-4_14
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