| Summary: |
During the past three decades, politicians struck a Faustian
pact. In return for ‘labour market flexibility’, government
would top up declining wages through subsidies and tax
credits and redirect social protection from an emphasis
on social solidarity and social insurance to means-tested social assistance. In the aftermath of rioting, they must now face the following fact: it is the economic policies they have supported that are a major cause of the underlying
malaise. If they do not, they will find themselves acceding to an increasingly coercive and punitive social policy, epitomised by workfare and the vogue term of ‘conditional welfare’. Politicians must step back from the utilitarian direction in which they have taken us during the past thirty years and consider an alternative road.
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