Too diverse
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"Is Britain becoming too diverse to sustain the mutual obligations behind a good society and the welfare state?" --"Too diverse? " (2004) by David Goodhart |
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"Too diverse?" (2004) is an essay by British journalist David Goodhart published in the May issue of Prospect Magazine.
On the progressive dilemma he wrote (on welfare, solidarity and diversity):
- It was the Conservative politician David Willetts who drew my attention to the “progressive dilemma.” Speaking at a roundtable on welfare reform (Prospect, March 1998), he said: “The basis on which you can extract large sums of money in tax and pay it out in benefits is that most people think the recipients are people like themselves, facing difficulties which they themselves could face. If values become more diverse, if lifestyles become more differentiated, then it becomes more difficult to sustain the legitimacy of a universal risk-pooling welfare state. People ask, ‘Why should I pay for them when they are doing things I wouldn’t do?’ This is America versus Sweden. You can have a Swedish welfare state provided that you are a homogeneous society with intensely shared values. In the US you have a very diverse, individualistic society where people feel fewer obligations to fellow citizens. Progressives want diversity but they thereby undermine part of the moral consensus on which a large welfare state rests.”
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