By Our Public Goods Correspondent, Still Fighting for Bulk-Billed Dignity
The erosion of the welfare state is more than policy drift—it’s a dismantling of a hard-won social contract. The belief that society should care for its most vulnerable is ancient—rooted in faith, morality, and history. But the modern welfare state, as a state-backed promise of health, education, housing, and income security, only truly took shape after the Second World War.
In the UK, that clarity found a name in the Beveridge Report of 1942 and a mission to slay the “Five Giants”: Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor, and Idleness. This vision became real with the NHS, public housing, social security, and universal education. Similar models blossomed across Europe, Canada, Australia, and even parts of the Global South. These weren’t utopias, but they were serious efforts to create more just, resilient societies.
Then came the backlash.
By the 1970s, economic stagflation gave ideological ammunition to those who’d always loathed the welfare state. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, wielding the twin swords of tax cuts and free markets, declared open war on the social contract. Welfare bred laziness, they claimed. Public services were bloated. The market knew best. Out went regulation, in came privatisation. Public housing was sold off. Health and education were repackaged as commodities. Social protections were reframed as burdens.
The 1990s brought hope of reversal—but instead came capitulation. Clinton and Blair embraced “Third Way” politics, a friendly face on the same neoliberal doctrine. Sure, schools got new buildings and hospitals got new signs, but welfare rolls shrank, tuition fees appeared, and workfare became the new charity. The state didn’t vanish—it simply retreated from the poor and leaned in for the rich.
Yet now, as inequality reaches levels not seen since Dickensian times and climate chaos threatens the foundations of modern life, the welfare state faces not just erosion—but extermination.
In the United States, Donald Trump has appointed Elon Musk to head the new “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE)—a Silicon Valley dystopia masquerading as fiscal responsibility. The goal? Slash government spending. The reality? Gutting welfare provisions, cutting Medicaid, shrinking food aid, and defunding public housing. All while billionaires get tax breaks and tech bros fantasize about governing like it’s a crypto startup. The result: the market wins, the poor lose, and the “safety net” becomes a punchline on X (formerly Twitter).
In Australia, Peter Dutton has revealed that, if elected, he will appoint Jacinta Nampijinpa Price to a similar role—tasked with reining in what little remains of the social safety net. While cloaked in rhetoric about “personal responsibility” and “ending waste,” the reality is clear: cuts to health, education, and social services, particularly in Indigenous communities already under strain. The plan is simple—less welfare, more austerity. And a glossy media rollout to make it all seem palatable.
In the United Kingdom, Nigel Farage and the Reform Party are no longer hiding behind euphemisms. If elected, Farage has openly declared his intention to abolish the NHS—the very crown jewel of the post-war welfare state. What was once the envy of the world is now on the chopping block, to be replaced by vague promises of “innovation” and likely, American-style health insurance schemes. For a nation built on the promise of care from cradle to grave, it is nothing short of a betrayal.
These aren’t isolated policy decisions. They are coordinated assaults—across borders—on the very idea that the state owes anything to its citizens beyond law enforcement and border control. The new neoliberalism is bolder, more shameless. Its champions are media-savvy populists who drape austerity in the flag and call cruelty common sense.
Yet despite decades of cuts, the evidence is clear: strong welfare states produce healthier, safer, more equal societies. They reduce crime. They expand opportunity. They foster real freedom—the kind that comes not from bootstraps, but from knowing you won’t go bankrupt for breaking a leg.
The real cost of the erosion of the welfare state isn’t measured in dollars—it’s measured in despair, in lost futures, in the erosion of solidarity itself.
In a time of rising fascism, climate upheaval, and technological disruption, we don’t need less state—we need a better one. A welfare state for the 21st century: green, inclusive, and democratic.
But first, we have to defend what’s left.
Because this isn’t just about budgets—it’s about what kind of society we want to be.
And whether, when the next crisis comes, we’ll have more than just thoughts and prayers.
