The Welfare State and Its Critics
Growth first, benefits after
- Postwar economic growth supported an increase in welfare benefits; however, subsequent economic stagnation led to criticism and limitation of the welfare state.
- The order is causal: growth supported the benefits, so the benefits rested on the growth continuing.
- However marks the turn, and the CED puts both halves in one sentence so neither can be read alone.
The CED's causal order is that...
So the benefits rested on the growth continuing.
The third shift in liberalism's position
- 6.9: liberalism shifted from laissez-faire to interventionist policies in response to industrialisation.
- 8.11: all three ideologies enlarged the state, differing over why it might command.
- 9.6: stagnation produces criticism and limitation — the argument turns again, and the CED records the turn without taking a side.
'Criticism and limitation of the welfare state' means it was...
The alternative reading is simply false.
'Limitation' is not abolition
- The CED says criticism and limitation of the welfare state, not its end.
- So the accurate claim is that the welfare state was contested and constrained, and survived in constrained form.
- That precision matters because the alternative reading — that it disappeared — is simply false.
The growth phase, the stagnation phase, or the accurate verdict?
Sort each statement about the welfare state.
Put the three turns in liberalism's position in order.
6.9, then 8.11's enlarged state, then 9.6.
'Limitation' is not abolition. The CED says stagnation led to criticism and limitation of the welfare state — so the accurate claim is that it was contested and constrained and survived in constrained form, not that it ended.
Select all the state-based developments in play in this period.
Laissez-faire is what the state-based model replaced.
State-based development and its responses
- The objective's phrase is state-based economic developments... and the responses to these developments.
- State-based development: the welfare state itself, and in the east 9.4's central planning.
- Responses: criticism and limitation in the west, and 9.7's failed reform in the east.
Most answers leave out the third sentence: what ____.
State the growth half, the criticism half, and then what remained.
Writing a two-part claim
- The CED's whole subtopic is one sentence with a however in it, so mirror that structure.
- State the growth-and-benefits half, then the stagnation-and-criticism half, then say what survived.
- Three sentences, and the third is the one most answers leave out.
A benefit funded out of growth is a promise about the future. While the future keeps arriving as expected, nobody asks how it is paid for. When it stops arriving, the question is asked all at once, and it sounds like an accusation.
Postwar economic growth supported an increase in welfare benefits; however, subsequent economic stagnation led to criticism and limitation of the welfare state. The benefits rested on growth continuing; limitation is not abolition, so the welfare state was contested and constrained rather than ended — the third turn in an argument that runs from 6.9's shift from laissez-faire to intervention through 8.11's enlarged state.