The Pros And Cons Of The Swedish Welfare State

The NHS came around in July 5, 1948. The Health Minister Aneurin (also known as Nye) Bevan purely nationalised the existing system across the UK. The groundbreaking change was to make all services freely available to everyone. Half of Scotland’s landmass was already covered by a state-funded health system serving the entire community and directly run from Edinburgh. Additionally, the war years had seen a state-funded hospital building programme in Scotland on a scale unknown in Europe. This was combined into the new NHS. Scotland also had its own individual medical tradition, this is centred on its medical schools rather than private practice. The legislation that empowered the UK to have the NHS is National Health Service Act (1948), this despite opposition from doctors, who maintained on the right to continue treating some patients privately. The NHS ensured that Doctors, hospital, dentists, opticians, ambulances, midwives and health visitors were available, free to everybody. This Reason why we have health services is because it developments a view that health care was a right, not something given unreliably by charity, also two-party’s agreement that the existing services were in a mess and had to be sorted out, it stopped financial difficulties for the voluntary hospitals and After the second world war it ensured the creation of an emergency medical service as part of the war effort

The notion of consensual politics in Nordic countries is built on a culture of equality and the importance of persistently trustworthy behaviour which are based on a common set of values (Delhey and Newton, 2004). These Nordic countries include Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland and Denmark. The following values, institutional and political characteristics are typically highlighted when making reference to these countries: egalitarianism by means of universal and generous social insurance systems, solidarity, public welfare service systems, proactive labour market and finally agreed industrial policies which maintain a level of consensus within Nordic politics (Strandberg, 2006). These characteristics have been one of the main reasons for the development of their comprehensive welfare provisions, which creates a sense of solidarity among these countries (Kuhnle, 1991: Peterson, 1994 cited in Lee Miles, 1996). This paper will start by assessing and defining the existence of consensual Nordic politics today by discussing how it had been in the past, and then looking at the future of consensual politics in Nordic countries. Also in this essay the two countries, which will be compared, are Finland and Sweden showing, which state has maintained a consensual form of policy making and which have had more of a decline and how it got to that point. It will then go on to explain the reasons for the decline and what sort of reforms can be done in order to ensure a rise in consensual

Today Denmark is one of the most prosperous countries in the world. Unemployment rates are low. Denmark also has low inflation and a surplus on both balance of payments and public expenditure. The World Economic Forum’s 2008 competitiveness index ranks Denmark in its Top Three world-wide. And the World Transparency Index ranks it as the world champion in non-corruption. Furthermore it should be noted that other international comparisons nominate the Danes as the happiest people in the world! Denmark’s success is so impressive.

After World War two, the west and the Soviets brought up tensions between each other. Countries such as Great Britain, the United States, Canada, France and others practiced a capitalist economy. Capitalism is a free market ideal in which the government has as little intervention to its people as possible. On the other hand, the Soviets practiced a Communist government. Communism is a form of socialism that has its government get involved in everyone’s daily life. This meant that the government determined how much and what kinds of goods would be produced.

In America today, just over ten million people are on unemployment insurance, one hundred and ten million people are on welfare, and the total government spending annually is around one hundred and thirty billion dollars (Welfare Statistics). The welfare state is a political system based on the proposition that the government has the individual responsibility to ensure that the minimum standard of living is met for all citizens. Specifically, in the matters of health care, public education, employment, and social security, the welfare state assumes all responsibility. According to John Rawls, “In a just society the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled; the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests. The only thing that permits us to acquiesce in an erroneous theory is the lack of a better one; analogously, an injustice is tolerable only when it is necessary to avoid an even greater injustice“(Rawls). In the 1840s, Otto Von Bismarck, the first Chancellor of Germany, was the father of the modern welfare state. He built the program to win over the support of the working middle class in Germany and ultimately reduce the outflow of immigrants to the U.S., where welfare did not exist (Welfare State). In the United States, not all companies provided workers with benefits, thus the workers appealed to the government, giving rise to the first form of welfare capitalism.

The United States, whose economy exhibits elements of both capitalism and socialism, has what is known as a ____

What would happen if the government made changes to the welfare system? There are approximately 110,489,000 of Americans on welfare. Many people benefit from what the system has to offer: food stamps, housing, health insurance, day care, and unemployment. Taxpayers often argue that the individuals who benefit from the system, abuse the system; however, this is not entirely true. Many of the people who receive benefits really and truly need the help. Even though some people believe welfare should be reformed, welfare should not be reformed because 40% of single mothers are poor, some elderly people do not have a support system, and college students can not afford to take extra loans.

Sometimes life hits you hard, one day you are living paycheck to paycheck, the next day you lose your job and you wonder how you are going to live at all. So you gather your pride and stand in line to ask for assistance. For some, this process is humiliating, for others it is a way of life. Welfare was developed to help Americans suffering through the Depression. At some point it went from providing assistance to becoming a crutch to those who did not want to work. The government decided I was time to put an end to the abuse of the welfare and the Republicans pushed for reform of the system. In many ways the reform did more harm than good and there is a fine line between reform and the edge of poverty. With that being said, many Americans still

Most of these people are children with a single parent, usually a mother. This is also widespread among minorities such as African Anericans and Hispanics. A study showed that this group are twice likely to fall below poverty line compared to their white counterparts.

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) was one of the biggest legislation signed by Bill Clinton that focused on welfare. The main goals of this law were to lessen the dependency on federal government welfare while increasing employment and reducing poverty.

Many people find change to be pointless and would even say, “If it isn’t broke don’t fix it.” Nevertheless, even the welfare system must cause controversy over their reform and need to change. The controversy regarding the reform of welfare stems from if it is beneficial or not. One side debates that welfare reform provides benefits for those who need it most and tries to create conditions that remove people from government assistance. While on the other hand, it is said that someone or a group of people

The impact of welfare policy, in particular work-family policy, on the integration of immigrants in the two countries depends on the extent to which welfare policy operates evenly among immigrants and natives. If the policy operates in the same way, the share of dual-earner families among immigrants in Sweden will be higher and therefore the relative position of immigrant families will be better. On the other hand, if the policy does not operate equally, immigrant families might suffer a larger income gap in Sweden. In addition, since Sweden’s welfare policy is more generous than the American, the differences between immigrants and natives will be more pronounced in the U.S. relative to Sweden when we look at income from work and less pronounced

After the destruction of the American society, we must rebuild our government, taking extreme caution not to make the same mistakes as past societies. For the new government, our best choices are capitalism and communism. In theory, capitalism gives the opportunity to work hard in order to succeed, while communism makes everyone equal and therefore happy. However, both of these government systems have many flaws in practice. We all grew up in a mostly capitalist society that contained small elements of socialism, a government that focuses on giving everyone equal opportunities to succeed in life, but to a lesser extent of communism. However, socialism often morphs into communism in theory, and we will not include it as a starting government

The two dominant economic systems we have in the world today are socialism and capitalism. In this text, I will in addition to comparing and contrasting socialism and capitalism also discuss the shortcomings of these two economic systems. Further, amongst other things, I will highlight the overlaps between the two.

Despite the economic problems, Denmark has a sound unemployment rate that has held steady at 6.1% of as 2011. The small size of the country and the relatively slow growth rate of its population have allowed Denmark to maintain this relatively healthy unemployment rate relative to other European countries. The World Bank classifies Denmark as a high income country and a member of OECD (World Bank, 2012). The country had been growing between 2 and 3% annually during the 2000s prior to the recession. During these years, the unemployment rate was lower, in the 4-5% and just over 3% in 2008 prior to the bursting of the housing bubble and the onset of the economic downturn. As a result, Denmark's current situation reflects challenges associated with reaching full employment in the economy, but its excellent starting point means that the country is relatively