Großbritannien: eine Oase des Kapitalismus im staatsgläubigen Europa, eine Insel “amerikanischer Verhältnisse” in der EU? Think again, schreibt der Daily Telegraph:
One in three households across Britain is now dependent on the state for at least half its income, it emerged today.
Official government figures showed that more than seven million households are getting most of their income from government handouts. ...
The figures, prepared by the Department for Work and Pensions but cited today in a new report from the Civitas think-tank, paint a stark picture of how Britain’s dependency culture has grown over the last few decades. ...
According to David Green from Civitas, the author of the report, data on the real scale of state dependency have only been collected for the last five years or so. But he estimated that the proportion of households dependent on the state for at least 50 per cent of income had been probably as low as five per cent in the 1960s. ...
His report in the current issue of Civitas Review makes the wider point that conventional politics is no longer providing the answers to Britain’s problems. The Blair years had “tested to destruction” the notion that big spending on health, education and welfare was the answer. ...
Labour might embrace the “terminology of markets”, such as choice competition, but “political discussion of public services like health and education still seems stranded halfway between the age of collectivism and a more consumer-friendly alternative”.
Was meinte Oskar Lafontaine eigentlich, als er vor kurzem Großbritannien als eine “Hochburg des Kapitalismus” bezeichnete? Gehört eine große staatliche Umverteilungsmaschinerie inzwischen schon zum Kapitalismus?
