Abstract
Thus far, there has been a reluctance to instigate a dialogue and engage with the tensions between two literatures with significant insights for each other. The first is the literature on the fiscal sustainability of welfare states, which is invariably predicated upon future growth primarily to manage demographic changes. The second is the post-growth literature, which has enjoyed a renaissance in recent years due to an environmental critique of economic growth. Both literatures contain implications for the analysis of welfare state sustainability. The primary contribution of this paper will be to explore the intractability of the tensions between these discourses and the difficulty of mapping out a progressive policy direction in the twenty-first century which meets both our environmental and social sensibilities. It is claimed that in the post-industrial world the fiscal sustainability of welfare capitalism is dependent upon public expenditure financed indirectly an environmentally unsustainable growth dynamic, but that ironically any conflagration of public welfare programmes is likely to be counter-productive as the welfare state is able to promote de-carbonisation strategies and notions of the public good as well as promoting monetarily and ecologically efficient public welfare services.
Highlights
Despite both being embraced primarily by those on the left, the body of work on the fiscal sustainability of welfare states and the post-growth literature have, far, remained segregated from each other
Keynesian strategies are central to this perceived crisis of growth. The latter is concerned with a crisis for growth and prescribes a curtailment of economic expansion in order to ward off further environmental degradation and the onset of climate change; a position which significantly problematises the solutions of the former
In an attempt to engage with their insights and frictions, and in an attempt to decipher how we should think about welfare state sustainability, this paper will explore the following questions:
Summary
Despite both being embraced primarily by those on the left, the body of work on the fiscal sustainability of welfare states and the post-growth literature have, far, remained segregated from each other. This is a more environmental argument, but it is still worth deliberating the stark ramifications of welfare retrenchment and privatisation in this scenario (as well as the effects this has on inequality and social mobility) upon healthcare costs, education and the potential costs of increased criminality that can accompany reduced state support and growths in inequality (Weston 1999, Wilkinson and Pickett 2009, Jennings et al 2012) All of this is to marginalise the more normative case that combining pre-existing inequalities and vulnerabilities with the socio-economic implications of both climate change and the transition to post-growth conditions ethically demands social models which de-commodify market forces and protects the most vulnerable. If the hypothesis of the post-growth literature that environmental sustainability cannot be reconciled with growth is correct, it appears as if the transition towards environmental sustainability cannot live with, or be operationalised without, robust welfare states
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