'math the generation who set up the welfare state and the NHS never forsaw how bloated they would become.
The former was set up to scoop up those in dire need. And quite rightly so. But it was never planned to be as widespread as is now the case.'
Absolutely the growth and the general air of promise and optimism of the postwar years blinded everyone to the possibility that there could ever be years of slow or no growth. Yes, the welfare state has grown, and much else has changed too. Much of the landscape of Britain would not be recognisable to someone who lived alone in a cave since 1948. Change has been exponential on every level and practically nobody could have foreseen a lot of it. Who could have predicted the fate of British heavy manufacturing, the hobbling of mining, the development of a service economy back in the late 1940s the result of all of those factors has been the end of solid union jobs for the working class, the rise of poorly paid service jobs, the rise of job insecurity, and the rise in need.
To strip away the financial underpinnings of a large bloc of the population just at a time when they are most needed and when the employment outlook is at its most bleak will not turn back the clock to start again and do welfare 'right' this time. The basic fact that there may not be jobs out there for all the hundreds of thousands of people who will need them remains. There will still be people in dire need, and in fact there will be more people in dire need. That much is predictable at a time of slow to no growth and global financial upheaval.
The welfare state was designed with the basic underlying principle that all people are equal, that equality itself is really good for the body politic and that basic human dignity is something worthwhile in a concrete way from an economic and a moral and a political pov. Apathy about politics, apathy about education, and lack of engagement with the idea of a national entity result from inequality, from a perception that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Such perceptions do not come from thin air. The appeal of right wing populism is shown here imo, and so also is the apathy generated by perceptions of how society has become fractured, with the redistribution of wealth going in favour of the better off for at least two generations now.
The flip side of the coin is that widespread welfare, income support and the existence of the NHS have made it possible for British employers to pay less than they might otherwise have to for qualified employees, and that has resulted in the upward flow of profits and the rise and rise of the stock exchange. Capital has not in general found its way back into the economy in the form of investment or small business but instead has flowed into investment via the exchanges, often into foreign economies and of course into the pockets of the well off. The individual taxpayer has paid for the NHS and for the other services of the welfare state while British business has benefited from the taking up of slack that income support, housing benefit, etc., has afforded. British business in its blind way tends to ignore that which does not hit it in the pocket, or stop to analyse factors that contribute to the bottom line, but American business is very conscious of the costs that someone must incur in a developed society which holds certain values, however tenuously in the case of the US, and which have a direct impact on profits -- like providing health insurance for employees for instance.