South By North Strategies, Ltd.

Mike Konczal wonders about “The Great Society’s Next Frontier.”

The 40-year conservative project to dismantle the welfare state has failed. Ronald Regan couldn’t reduce the size of the government (even his own), and the reactionary plans of George W. Bush and Paul Ryan to privatize Social Security and bleed out public health care have been rejected by voters.  The slow-motion implosion of the conservative movement means that an abstract notion of a minimal state with no social insurance is not coming.
..
As [Prof. Lane] Kenworthy notes, people value insurance more as they grow richer. Insurance provides protection against both the unknown and bad luck. And the welfare state is how social insurance is provided in the United States. As such it will take on a larger, not a smaller, role as our country grows richer. With the promise of health care completing the project of the 20th-century welfare state, liberals need to envision how to meet the needs of a new century.