← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Leveller
Thread ID: 11771 | Posts: 1 | Started: 2004-01-07
2004-01-07 02:31 | User Profile
Here I show how the welfare state's growth can be viewed as the transfer of the "dependency" function from families to state employees. The process began in 19th-century Sweden, through the socialization of children's economic time via school attendance, child labor, and state old-age pension laws. These changes, in turn, created incentives to have only a few, or no children. In the 1930s, social democrats Gunnar and Alva Myrdal used the resulting "depopulation crisis" to argue for the full socialization of child rearing. Their "family policy," implemented over the next forty years, virtually destroyed the autonomous family in Sweden, substituting a "client society" where citizens are clients of public employees. While Sweden is now trying to break out of the welfare state trap, the old arguments for the socialization of children have come to the United States.
[url]http://www.mises.org/fullstory.asp?control=1406[/url]