This is one of a series of posts that will ask what the most pertinent question raised by a prominent influencer of political economy might have been, and what the relevance of that question might be today. There is a list of all posts in the series at the end of each entry. The origin of this series is noted here.
After the first two posts in this series, the topics have been chosen by me, and this is one of those. This series has been produced using what I describe as directed AI searches to establish positions with which I agree, followed by final editing before publication.
William Beveridge (1st Baron Beveridge) was a British economist, civil servant, academic and Liberal politician best known as the architect of the UK welfare state despite his eugenicist views, which he shared with another Liberal peer, (Lord) John Maynard Keynes. I might not share some of his views, but it is indisputable that William Beveridge changed the UK for the better and helped prevent the country from returning to the horrors of the pre-war economy. For that reason, he deserves to be in his series of major economic thinkers.
William Beveridge was not a revolutionary. He was a careful civil servant, a statistician, an academic, a liberal reformer and a Liberal politician. Yet the impact of his 1942 report, Social Insurance and Allied Services, was revolutionary nonetheless. In the midst of war, with Britain exhausted, indebted and under bombardment, Beveridge articulated a vision of social security so comprehensive and so morally compelling that it reshaped the British state for a generation.
Beveridge identified five “Giant Evils” that modern society must confront if it is to be just, describing them as:
- Want
- Disease
- Ignorance
- Squalor, and
- Idleness.
His argument was not abstract. It was practical, administrative and rooted in lived experience. Poverty, he argued, was not a moral failing but a systemic risk. Insecurity, he argued, was not inevitable; it was a consequence of policy choices.
The Beveridge Report promised something radical in its simplicity: that a wealthy society could guarantee its citizens freedom from fear of:
- hunger,
- illness,
- unemployment,
- old age, and
- destitution.
Hence the William Beveridge question: If a society knows how to abolish want, why does it repeatedly choose to tolerate insecurity, inequality and preventable hardship instead?
Security as the foundation of freedom
Beveridge rejected the idea that freedom exists in the absence of state support. On the contrary, he argued that true freedom depends on security. A person constantly at risk of poverty cannot plan, participate or flourish. Insecurity narrows horizons and corrodes civic life.
Social insurance was, therefore, not charity. It was a collective investment in freedom. By pooling risk across society and across the life course, the state could ensure that misfortune did not become catastrophe. This insight remains foundational, and routinely ignored by those who equate freedom with the absence of government.
Universality, not stigma
One of Beveridge's most important design principles was universality. Benefits should be available to all as a right, not dispensed selectively as a favour. This was not just administrative efficiency; he made it clear that it was a moral necessity.
Means-testing, Beveridge knew and so asserted, creates stigma, complexity and exclusion. In contrast, universal systems create solidarity. They embed the idea that social security is something we all contribute to and may all need. The post-war welfare state drew its legitimacy from this principle, and its erosion has tracked the erosion of trust ever since.
The post-war settlement — and its unravelling
For a time, Beveridge's vision worked. The welfare state dramatically reduced poverty, improved health outcomes, expanded education and stabilised society. It underpinned decades of rising living standards and social cohesion. In doing so, it provided something else: a sense of social stability and cohesion that the UK had never previously enjoyed.
However, from the late 1970s onward, this settlement was dismantled. Social security was reframed as dependency. Public provision was cast as inefficiency. Collective risk-sharing was replaced with individual responsibility, regardless of circumstance.
The result was predictable: rising insecurity, widening inequality, and the return of the poverty that Beveridge thought had been banished.
Beveridge versus austerity
Beveridge believed the state had a duty to maintain full employment. Work was not just income; as far as he was concerned, it was also about dignity, participation and purpose. Austerity policies that tolerate mass unemployment would have been anathema to him.
Yet modern governments routinely accept unemployment, underemployment and precarity as usual, and even necessary. Simultaneously, they treat social security as a cost to be minimised rather than a stabiliser to be strengthened. In doing so, they recreate the very conditions Beveridge sought to eliminate.
The moral failure of “we cannot afford it”
Perhaps the most pernicious modern argument against Beveridge's vision is that it is unaffordable. This claim collapses under scrutiny. Wealth has grown enormously since 1942. Productivity has soared. Resources exist.
What has changed is the distribution of wealth and the political will to use it for public purposes. The refusal to fund social security adequately is not an economic necessity but a choice: to prioritise low taxes on wealth, permissive corporate regulation, and financial accumulation over social protection.
Beveridge would have recognised this immediately. Want persists not because it is unavoidable, but because it is tolerated.
What answering the William Beveridge Question would require
To take Beveridge seriously today would require more than nostalgia. It would require rebuilding the social foundations he believed essential to freedom. That would mean:
-
Restoring universality, moving away from punitive means-testing toward rights-based provision.
-
Guaranteeing income security, ensuring that no one falls below a socially acceptable standard of living.
-
Recommitting to full employment, using fiscal policy to ensure work is available for all who want it.
-
Investing in public services, health, education, housing and care as social infrastructure, not market commodities.
-
Reframing welfare as collective insurance, not as failure, but as mutual protection across the life cycle.
These are not radical demands. They are the logical extension of a society that claims to value dignity.
Inference
The William Beveridge Question exposes one of the deepest hypocrisies of modern political economy. We live in societies far richer than the one Beveridge addressed, yet we tolerate levels of insecurity he would have found morally indefensible. We possess the knowledge, institutions and resources to abolish want, and yet choose not to.
Beveridge reminds us that poverty is not a natural condition. It is a policy outcome. Social security is not a burden on society but a precondition for its health.
To answer his question is to accept a simple truth we once understood: a civilised society does not ask whether it can afford to protect its people; it asks whether it can afford not to.
Previous posts in this series:
- The economic questions
- Economic questions: The Henry Ford Question
- Economic questions: The Mark Carney Question
- Economics questions: The Keynes question
- Economics questions: The Karl Marx question
- Economics questions: the Milton Friedman question
- Economic questions: The Hayek question
- Economic questions: The James Buchanan question
- Economic questions: The J K Galbraith question
- Economic questions: the Hyman Minsky question
- Economic questions: the Joseph Schumpeter question
- Economic questions: The E F Schumacher question
- Economics questions: the John Rawls question
- Economic questions: the Thomas Piketty question
- Economic questions: the Gary Becker question
- Economics questions: The Greg Mankiw question
- Economic questions: The Paul Krugman
- Economic question: the Tony Judt question
- Economic questions: The Nancy MacLean question
- Economic questions: The David Graeber question
- The economic questions: the Amartya Sen question
- Economic questions: the Jesus of Nazareth question
- Economic questions: the Adam Smith question
- Economic questions: (one of) the Steve Keen question(s)
- Economic questions: the Stephanie Kelton question
- Economic questions: the Thomas Paine question
- Economic questions: the John Christensen question
- Economic questions: the Eugene Fama question
- Economic questions: the Thomas Hobbes Question
- Economic questions: the James Tobin question
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Please don’t take this as a dissenting view, but looking at history it seems to me that Beveridge’s rationale became the victim of other global factors that simply created opportunities for what was latent Neo-liberalism:
1. Industrial complacency in the post war period – the victors with New Deal/Beveridge sat on their economic laurels whilst the defeated economies modernised and caught up with better quality imports over domestic ones etc.
2. The growth of international finance/financial markets and ability to carpet bag perfectly good British companies and asset strip them leaving chaos behind (Beveridge did base the welfare state on a strong domestic industrial policy or output, so 1 & 2 apply) .
3. The oil shock of the Yom Kippur war where the West backed the country without the oil and upset those who were supplying it to us = inflation.
4. The removal of the gold standard – attributable only so far because each country had to learn to manage the new reality, some with success, others without and of course the U.S. could bully other countries more directly with their dollar power?
Thus it became possible – but not true I agree – to say that we could not afford what Beveridge had put in place. And so the likes of von Hayek got their chance in the sun etc and here we are today with the consequences.
Noted
“Beveridge rejected the idea that freedom exists in the absence of state support. On the contrary, he argued that true freedom depends on security. A person constantly at risk of poverty cannot plan, participate or flourish. Insecurity narrows horizons and corrodes civic life.”
If he could come back from the dead he would be deeply saddened that out of sheer ignorance on the part of many voters British society is fast reverting to “Libertarianism for Some”!
I remember learning about Beveridge at school. At that time his views were accepted as moving towards a civilised society, and the report celebrated as the foundations for our modern welfare state. Sadly Thatcher came to power just before I left school and we started moving in the opposite direction. It seems the lack of social housing is the biggest issue today. People paying too much for poor quality housing that can affect their health and their children’s ability to get a good education.
If Beveridge could return I’m sure one of the priorities he’d want to focus on would be your item:-
“Recommitting to full employment, using fiscal policy to ensure work is available for all who want it.”
I think the MMT “Job Guarantee” idea needs to be re-worked so that apprenticeships and job re-training becomes available to both private and government entreprises as a government subsidy. At the end of a Randall Wray 2000 paper he points out the following:-
“By operating a labour buffer stock program the government is essentially offering to provide HPM in exchange for labour.”
In other words government “reserves” (money) is being injected into the economy which maintains demand.
Given the poor state of maintenance of the public realm (including highways and byways) there would appear to be plenty of work to do for a “buffer stock maintenance agency” with training on the job. We used to have this once upon a time after a fashion with public Works Departments but there’s no need to say you can’t also have private contracted Works Departments (Public Sector Maintenance Agency) as well.
https://tools.bard.edu/wwwmedia/resources/files/924/WP%2012%20-%20Money%20and%20Inflation%20-%20Wray.pdf
Here’s another take on getting rid of using the pernicious NAIRU:-
https://new-wayland.com/blog/universal-credit-jobs/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAIRU
During my life the Conservatives have always made the pitch that THEY are the patriotic party.
The 1945 election was unique. It was the first election for ten years- in 1935 the National govt. ( Conservative mainly with a few National Labour and National Liberal MPs ) had won with 387 seats. People in the UK voted in the normal way in the July of 1945 and then the ballot boxes remained unopened while the forces’ votes were flown in from around the world and they were counted separately.
The armed forces were mainly made up of people who would not have been in them except for the war. They voted overwhelmingly for Labour. They wanted a fairer deal remembering the “land fit for heroes” promise of Lloyd George had not been fulfilled and Geddes Axe had slashed state spending.
One definition of love is between two people is wanting the best for the other person. My definition of patriotism is wanting the best for the country as a whole.
The ambition of Beveridge was patriotic in the best sense.
Beveridge was a Liberal and had nothing in common with neo-Liberalism.
Labour embraced his vision then. It is a tragedy they have lost this vision today.
Much to agree with
The first thing to say is that it is not “economics” that stops us – any understanding of MMT and the economic conditions of the late 1940s clearly shows this – it’s “politics”.
So, why does it seem so politically impossible today?
Well, two World Wars gave a sense of solidarity across all backgrounds that allowed our current model (in effect an insurance system with premiums paid through taxation) to thrive – that solidarity has now been replaced with “Why am I paying for their laziness/failure?”.
It is the rise of individualism that makes this so hard to deliver today. It is natural that the solidarity or war should decay over time but it has been accelerated by technology, social separation (by class/education etc.) and an incessant media campaign.
For as long as we still have a “strivers versus skivers” narrative – and we do, I see it articulated among all sorts of grpoups that ought to know better – it will be hard to implement a New Beveridge settlement.
So, we need to
(1) regulate technology giants (as, perhaps, the EU and Australia are trying to do?)
(2) Create greater social mixing. (Ban private education? Bring back National Service as a National Care Service?)
(3) Control the Media narrative. (Tell better stories? Regulate media ownership?)
Until we win this battle I fear Beveridge’s wisdom will be lost.
I am thinking about this, between lifting binoculars to my eyes.
Precisely – having used economics to defeat our threats abroad, we seemed then to be used to the idea of defeating the domestic threats of poor health, poor housing, poor education, etc., using war economics.
That commitment did NOT defeat itself as von Hayek and Thatcher portrayed it as doing. That narrative is pure baloney.
And we only did lend lease because our industrial capacity was limited to fight a global war – not because we were economically weak (but yes, we were stretched for sure).
“If a society knows how to abolish want […]”
“”[B]oth the war-time coalition and the Labour government had fiddled the indices and the benefit rates actually set were nearly a third below those that Beveridge had recommended.” (Abel-Smith 1992) Furthermore, as already noted – and by design – the National Insurance benefits paid little more than national assistance. Unemployment Benefit was paid for only a year – not indefinitely as Beveridge had recommended.
“[…] The State Pension […] was also set low, with more people than originally assumed needing national assistance to top it up. By 1954, the National Assistance Board had 1.8 million on its books, though the majority were pensioners.”
Nicholas Timmins; Why has the UK’s social security system become so means-tested”; 2023; IFS Deaton Review of Inequalities; citing Brian Abel-Smith; “The Beveridge Report: Its Origins and Outcomes”; 1992.
https://ifs.org.uk/inequality/
Beveridge meant well, but as a Civil Servant he had no power to influence the rates paid – which is how the post-war government failed us all. It’s not a new thing, this poverty. It was written into the Law.
Thanks