The average American donates 12 times as much money to charity (soup kitchens, houses for the poor,.etc) as the average Frenchman, and 6 times as much as the average Briton, and America is the most donation-giving industrial nation in the world.
Within the Socialist system, people pay higher taxes, and therefore feel less personal responsibility, as they expect the state to take care of these social problem such as homelessness, etc. etc.
While I was campaigning I would often hear pepole who defended 8 years of tax hikes with the phrase “You need to pay for services”.
I would then ask them what services they were receiving - being that they were mostly upper middle class, they couldn’t name many.
This is of course because they are not the main beneficiaries of the welfare state, they are the people who largely finance it, being the productive middle class.
From Wiki
A welfare state is a concept of government where the state plays a key role in the protection and promotion of the economic and social well-being of its citizens. It is based on the principles of equality of opportunity, equitable distribution of wealth, and public responsibility for those unable to avail themselves of the minimal provisions for a good life. The general term may cover a variety of forms of economic and social organization.[1]
There are two main interpretations of the idea of a welfare state:
- A model in which the state assumes primary responsibility for the welfare of its citizens. This responsibility in theory ought to be comprehensive, because all aspects of welfare are considered and universally applied to citizens as a “right”.
- Welfare state can also mean the creation of a “social safety net” of minimum standards of varying forms of welfare.
Of course the USA has a Welfare/Warfare state what with almost 50% of GDP being government spending, a large amount of governmnet employees, huge military - which employs a great many people, unemployment benefits that were extended to 99 weeks, etc, etc.
From the Canadian Encyclopedia
Welfare state is a term that was apparently first used in the English language in 1941 in a book written by William Temple, Archbishop of York, England. For many years after, postwar British society was frequently characterized (often pejoratively) as a “welfare state,” but by the 1960s the term commonly denoted an industrial capitalist society in which state power was “deliberately used (through politics and administration) in an effort to modify the play of market forces.”
For Asa Briggs, the author of this definition in an article appearing in The Welfare State (1967), there are 3 types of welfare state activities: provision of minimum income, provision for the reduction of economic insecurity resulting from such “contingencies” as sickness, old age and unemployment, and provision to all members of society of a range of social services. Under this definition, Canada became a welfare state after the passage of the social welfare reforms of the 1960s (see SOCIAL SECURITY).
Richard Titmuss, one of the most influential writers on the welfare state, noted in Essays on the Welfare State (1959) that the social welfare system may be larger than the welfare state, a distinction of particular importance in Canada, where the social services component of the welfare state is less well developed. In addition to occupational welfare, there is a range of services provided by para-public, trade union, church, and nonprofit institutions. These are often funded by a combination of state and private sources.
Interesting side point - the Canadian Encyclopedia feels the need to place a paragraph on the “Female Perspective”.
But on reading the first two sentences, it sounds more like the “Marxist Perspective”
Female Perspective
Modern feminism provides an assessment of the welfare state from the standpoint of women. While it encompasses a range of viewpoints, the idea that women constitute an oppressed group within Canadian society is basic to all. The work that women do, whether in the household or in the labour force, is undervalued. Women remain the primary care givers in the home for spouses, children and aging relatives, work which they perform without pay in a world where only paid work is valued. A high percentage of women, including women with small children, are now participating in the labour force, but they are concentrated into a small range of occupations that are often connected to their role as primary care giver. Women remain underpaid in relation to men and have less access to higher paid positions (see WOMEN IN THE LABOUR FORCE).