Welfare Economics in Many Sectors

Welfare Economics In many sectors of the modern world, the success of a nation in raising its standards of living, in achieving socioeconomic equality or in reaching a point of sustainable resource distribution is considered relative to its treatment of its poorest citizens. That is, how a nation addresses publicly, legislatively and fiscally the needs of its most impoverished citizens can often be viewed as a telling indicator as to its broader social and economic progress on the whole.

This is an underlying philosophical imperative in the discussion on welfare economics and denotes that for many nations, the public assistance and support given to those in high areas of need is considered a shared responsibility. In yet other nations, particularly those which embrace most aggressively the theoretical aims of free market capitalism, there is a view of welfare as a secondary goal to the overarching interest of general economic growth.

These divergent perspectives underscore an ongoing debate with roots in longstanding pertinence to public administration and national distribution of wealth. Indeed, these underline the more general discussion on what is meant by social welfare and how this is evaluated through public channels. Therefore, we first proceed with a core definition of the concept of social welfare, which our reading reports is the indicator by which living standards are assessed across individual units of the population.

As the text by EEA (1994) indicates, "welfare economics is concerned with the welfare of individuals, as opposed to groups, communities, or societies because it assumes that the individual is the basic unit of measurement. It also assumes that individuals are the best judges of their own welfare, that people will prefer greater welfare to less welfare, and that welfare can be adequately measured either in dollars (or some other unit of currency) or as a relative preference." (p.

1) Here, we come to understand welfare not just as referring to the public support of the poorest individuals but as a way of rating the relative experience of all individuals rich and poor. In this regard, the gaps which are revealed between rich and poor and the distribution of populations across this continuum can be demonstrative of how a nation or society has selected to approach the issue of social welfare.

As the EEA text indicates, the approach which is taken to this matter may be shaped by one of a number of critical social theories. The two models which are regarded here as most frequently in circulation are those referred to as the Neo-Classical and New Welfare approaches to social welfare.

The former of these is based on the notion that each individual carries a certain utility in the well-being of a society as a whole and that, therefore, understanding the welfare of a society may best be accommodating by measuring the sum total of utilities represented by individuals. This denotes that the advancement in the utility of any and all members of society is seen as a primary impetus for social welfare.

The latter of these approaches, the New Welfare model, instead supposes that the individual units comprising a society will inherently have different levels of efficiency, different ranges of utility and therefore differentiated values to the economy. This proposition denotes that social welfare should better be understood as a mode of distributing wealth according to ability and competitive accomplishment. Here, we can see that there is something of a concrete distinction between these two approaches which reflects the philosophical value systems affixed thereto.

The Neo-Classical understanding of social welfare, the EEA text seems to indicate, is the province of a more socialist philosophical orientation where the idea of New Welfare appears to endorse the modes of free market capitalism that are today a defining force in the global economic scheme. In our research, we find that there is something of a convergence of both philosophical ethicality and practical economy that emphasizes the value of the Neo-Classical approach. This may be said to draw its perspective from the utilitarian school of philosophical thought.

According to the text by Albert & Hahnel, "by utilitarianism is here meant the ethical theory that the conduct which, under any given circumstances, is objectively right, is that which will produce the greatest amount of happiness of the whole; that is, taking into account all whose happiness is affected by the conduct." (Albert & Hahnel, 1) This seems to espouse a view of social welfare which states that the degree to which the poorest amongst a nation's citizens are pulled up to the standards established by the rest of society is the degree to which the society itself can be said to have achieved a certain economic health and progressive cultural context.

In this model, we consider an important principle that discounts the veracity of New Welfare ideologies. Accordingly, this approaches the subject with the understanding that those modes of individual welfare which actively serve to deprive the welfare of other individuals are regressive from the perspective of the state and its people.

In other words, a system whereby wealth is aggressively concentrated into the hands of a select few inevitably results in difficulties with respect to resource distribution, with respect to collective living standards and with respect to the individual utility to society of those who are in the deprived classes and demographics.

Where this idea of deprivation of utility is concerned, we find that there are determinable economic consequences for a whole nation and society of failing to maintain or protect the utility of the disenfranchised, impoverished or otherwise culturally disadvantaged sectors of a population. Their diminished productivity and heightened needs in the areas healthcare, education, job placement and criminal processing denote that those populations which are denied such utility will ultimately become a greater burden to a nation or society.

That said, the subject of welfare economics is complicated by the often.