Public choice, redistribution, and the relevance of the "Social Question" today

Abstract

The "social question" hearkens to a European discussion that arose during the 18th and 19th centuries as people moved from farms to cities in the aftermath of industrialization along with the demise of feudalism and its tradition of noblesse oblige. Within standard economic theory, a "social question" is non-sensical. There can be individual questions but not social questions. Within that theory, society is reducible to individuals who supply their services to the market and use their income to buy products. There can be individual problems if people are not content with their income, jobs, and similar things, but there is no sense in which there is a social problem. Once society is construed as an analytical object in its own right, however, there is a reasonable sense in which social problems can arise. How such problems might be addressed, however, is not intuitively obvious, as this chapter explores.