Two social models: safety net versus universal provider.

Halstead and Lind distinguish between two clearly distinct social models, clearly placing their bets (and that of what they call "the radical center") with one side:

Implicit in this Radical Centrist philosophy is a new conception of the role of government. There are, in essence, two models through which a government can provide basic economic security to its citizens: the safety net model and the universal provider model. The former assumes that public benefits should only go to help the neediest, while the latter assumes that public benefits should accrue to all citizens, regardless of need. The New Deal philosophy, in its most familiar version —epitomized by programs like Social Security and Medicare— is based on the universal provider model. The Radical Centrist philosophy, by contrast, is premised on the safety net model.

(Halstead & Lind: p. 22)

Really, what Halstead and Lind call the "safety net model" is no different than the traditional concept of subsidiarity, a concept very dear to liberals . The so-called welfare state originally started as an attempt to provide a safety net to those individuals who might fall through the cracks of an economic system that promoted fast-paced change and led to social inequality. It was a way to promote equality of opportunity in capitalistic countries without guaranteeing a more clear-cut equality of outcome, which would be closer to the Communist or traditionally Socialist approach. However, as many critics of the welfare state point out, the original intent was somehow distorted and quickly derived into a free-for-all approach where even the richest individuals could benefit from the Government services. Now, perhaps there are certain fields (education might be one) where this policy makes sense, since choosing the universal Government-backed service may be the consequence not only of a personal preference for a given service quality but also for a given philosophical approach that perhaps cannot be found anywhere else (in the case of education, it's not easy to find a secular approach to education outside the public school system in most developed nations). Yet, the unintended consequence of applying the universal provider model to most services is that even those who are rich enough benefit from it.

Now, this is one of the key differences between the classical liberal school and those who prefer to follow the Christian-Democratic and Social-Democratic traditions, with the so-called social liberals somewhere in between. One could argue in favor of the universal provider system on several grounds: first of all, clearly distinguishing between a public system for the needy and a private system for those who can afford it will most likely end in underfunded and poorly managed public system; second, while it is true that the better off benefit from a Government backed service, they pay for it via taxes, so it's not as if they get the service for free, they pay their proportionally equal share of it; and, finally, it can also be argued that by providing certain benefits to society as a whole regardless of income, our systems promote the idea of citizenship and belonging to the same community.

One way or another though, the pragmatic approach ought to take into consideration not only these philosophical reasons in favor of one approach or another, but also the practical conditions under which they are implemented: to what extent can we fund the universal provider system?, what is the overall quality of the system?, etc. As it tends to be the case, the answer to very old questions (and, let's face it, humans have been dealing with this one for quite some time now) rarely involves a clear "yes" or "no" universal answer. It all depends on the particular society we want to implement the policy for and its particular set of circumstances. Personally, I find it more interesting making an efffort not to rule anything out than to stress a single answer as the magic solution that will come to solve all our problems across the globe. Let's just agree to consider all the possibilities, take the time to obtain the data, review it, discuss it, and then make a common decision that counts with the largest possible support. All this, by necessity, has to be done individually in each society, which also rules out any universal solution.