"The Welfare State We’re In has been hailed by guest speaker Martin Durkin as “the most important book on the welfare state” and “one of the most important political/social/historical works of the last half century."
Find out more about The Welfare State We're In here…
The following video at The Centre for Independent Studies in Australia Bartholomew explains some of the difficulties with British socialised health care, education and other welfare systems.
Bartholomew has recently released a follow up book entitled "The Welfare of Nations". Find out more here…
In it, "Bartholomew argues that welfare statism - which he describes as the new, defining form of government of our age - has swept across the advanced world. Without any revolution or great theorist, welfare states are changing the nature of modern civilisation. But in what ways? And what lessons can be learned before it is too late?"
This quote from the video by Bartholomew says it all in my not so humble opinion:
"So, I would argue that the services have been I think disappointing is putting it mildly. They've been disastrous. They've been appallingly bad. Much worse than would have existed, even if no welfare state had been created. In fact I would argue especially if no welfare state had been created, because the systems that existed before were very substantial and growing and improving dramatically. But they weren't perfect, and that is in a way is the great trouble with the development of welfare states. You have a system that's not perfect but actually doing quite a lot of good stuff and then someone comes along and says, "ah, we can make this perfection. And so we can make this much better. We will have free for everybody, high class whatever it is." And the result is you have lower standards and it doesn't work out at all. And that's, the desire for perfection can be very dangerous."
Yet The Bahamas is headed down this road well travelled, ignoring all the signs.