In seventy years, social spending in Europe has multiplied fivefold. Poverty, on the other hand, has not disappeared. Although we are faced with a lamentable failure, the left continues to promise more state, as if insisting would change things. At some point, one must ask whether the model cures the disease or lives off it.
In 1942, William Beveridge published his foundational report on British social protection. The ambition was precise; he wanted to eradicate five evils: misery, disease, ignorance, squalor, and idleness. A temporary, universal safety net designed to get people back on their feet after World War II. A noble ambition, but not everything went as planned. Soon, the welfare state we know today in Europe has little to do with that project.
France today allocates 57% of its GDP to public spending, the highest proportion in the OECD. Germany, Sweden, and Italy are not far behind. The result of this madness is sovereign debts that exceed 100% of GDP everywhere, structurally deficit pension systems, and poverty rates that, after seven decades of massive transfers, remain stubbornly stable. In France, 15% of the population lives below the poverty line, the same figure as twenty years ago.
This is not a failure of ambition. It is a failure of model, and the problem is that our governments have spent more with the intention of changing things.
The welfare state obeys a perverse internal logic, a dangerous cycle, because the more it fails, the more resources it demands. Each disappointing indicator becomes the argument for a new benefit, a new device, a new agency, and more money. The system is never questioned. In France, there are today more than forty different social minimums, administered by dozens of agencies employing hundreds of thousands of officials whose official mission is to reduce the number of beneficiaries.
