Day 35 was on December 6th and was the last lecture, we still had class on December 8th but he stated that it was for review (and it actually was). This lecture continued discussing welfare states and while we didn’t finish this chapter in class he gave us a video lecture to complete the course (it was about healthcare) but I won’t be writing about it here. This was our last proper lecture and it was also the last day for office hours so I made sure to take advantage of it. First let’s get the class material done.

We began with Christian Democratic welfare states: states whose social policies are based on the nuclear family with a male breadwinner, designed primarily to achieve income stabilization to mitigate the effects of market-induced income insecurity; Germany is a key example. The most common social program is social insurance replacing a family’s market-based income when it is disrupted through unemployment, disability, etc.; benefits are tied to contributions funded by payroll taxes rather than general taxation; in corporatist models of economic governance social insurance programs are administered by and through sectoral-based organizations.

Liberal welfare states are those whose social policies focus on ensuring that all who can do so gain their income in the market; more concerned about preserving individual autonomy than reducing poverty or inequality; the United States is a key example. They utilize means-tested public assistance but some poor people don’t get assistance, only those labelled impoverished can get benefits, and benefits do not raise people out of poverty. Not all programs are means-tested, e.g. retirement benefits via social insurance. It is more concerned with encouraging market participation.

There are many explanations for welfare states. The “Power resources theory” is a structural arguement by Esping-Anderson that describes welfare states as reflecting the strength of the working and lower-middle classes. Social democratic welfare states have strong labour unions and powerful SocDem parties; Christian democratic welfare states have strong Christian democratic parties appealing to working and lower-middle classes; Liberal welfare states have weak working classes. In proportional electoral systems there is facilitating the creation of the more generous social democratic and Christian democratic systems. Majoritarian electoral systems are associated with Liberal welfare states.

Cultural theorists believe that long-standing values, religion, and ethnic or racial diversity explains the differences in welfare states. Anglo-American countries have stronger liberal traditions emphasizing the importance of the individual and individual autonomy; Protestantism, especially Calvinism believes that the wealthy are morally superior and has less sympathy for the poor; Catholics are generally more generous due to their beliefs in preserving social and family stability. Are there differences in generosity of social spending based on racial diversity? Well, many white people, specifically in the US, have a misperception on who exactly is on welfare and this misperception leads to them unwilling to support. Policies to assist non-white people. This is in part due to the “welfare queen” label that was thrown around to stigmatize those on welfare, specifically black women, but in reality the majority of people on welfare are white. There is the belief that diversity puts a strain on social services but this is empirically wrong. Sympathy for immigrants in Europe is waning because of these false beliefs.

Will the different models survive or converge in the globalization era? Well, competition for investment from mobile capital by lower taxes has resulted in the pressure on social expenditures; demographic changes like an aging society, dropping birth rates, and increasing burden for workers to pay the benefits for the elderly (dualization of the workforce). Dualization of the workforce is a split between the typical workforce and the gig economy, and how the service industry skews younger and female. The response after the Great Recession was an emphasis on “social investment policies”: encouraging employment and greater flexibility in the labour market; lowered welfare states’ effects on inequality, reducing traditional social spending (e.g. retirement) with more investment in job training.

Comparing welfare states Social democratic are the most generous while Liberal are the least generous, but differences have narrowed over time. With poverty reduction Social Democratic welfare states are better than Christian democratic which are better than Liberal. These differences have narrowed and inequality has increased in all reflecting the effects of globalization and demographic pressures. Social Policy in the Global North is like air, it’s natural, this is not the case for the Global South due to resources being limited (this was lecture material not my own thoughts). Neoliberal economic policies saw that economic growth was the best means of reducing poverty, it was implemented in the 1980s and 1990s cutting both social services and government subsidies. Since then social policies have been an important issue. In the Global South social policy is not provided by the state, but by informal security regimes: social needs provided by a combination of private markets, formal/informal community organizations, and family. Democratization expanded social policy previously limited to social insurance. The most successful policy so far has been Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) which is a means tested program that provides cash grants to the poor and in exchange require particular beneficial behaviour from the poor, such as children’s attendance at school and visits to health clinics. I guess CCTs first came from the Mexican government and has been effective in avoiding poverty traps, they have also been big in Brazil.

That’s where the election ended, sort of. We did briefly go over health care policy but not much as it would be provided via video lecture. After class I went straight to his office. While I was the first one there he arrived it’s another student in toe, i encouraged said student to go first and i waited outside. Another student came by and we waited together, when the first student finished I told the other to go ahead as I had no other classes and could wait a little longer. I said this because its true but I also don’t want to feel rushed, as in I like to take my time and i had aa lot of questions, I wouldn’t want to take up time that another student needed. After that student was done I was in and the first question I asked was related to my paper, I asked the same question here but wanted to see his answer:: “who said that the revolution would begin in industrialized countries and then spread too non-industrialized countries?” I rephrased the question a few times for him to really get the gears turning but he didn’t really know, he did say it was most likely Marx and definitely not Lenin. I asked about Engels as someone on here shared a quote from him for me and he said it was entirely possible, but Engels was more philosophical and focused on economic analysis while Marx was more dialectical.

After that, since it was my last office hours with him, I asked him about the PhD process and if I could go somewhere else to do it. With my focus of studies staying in Canada is not great and he agreed. He asked me why I wanted to stay in Canada, I corrected him saying that I don’t (he misunderstood). He asked just to be certain that what I was interested in was Marxism, I saiid yes, and with that he told me that Marxism is in a crisis of survival in this part of the world and Northern Europe and that my best bet were to go to Germany. I asked if any other countries were on the table, like those in Asia, and he said no. This was most likely due to the language barrier but he didn’t tell me why. He encouraged me to study in Europe, staying more central like Germany, he is familiar with that country specifically so I’m assuming thats why he was emphasizing it, but I’m assuming others are good places as well. I then asked him about living expenses, travel, and if I’d be able to take my dogs (judge me all you want), so far living expenses I’d pay myself and if the country is chill with it I should have no issues travelling with my dogs, and i think I remember him saying that the school would pay for travel but i may be misremembering (I unfortunately didn’t write it down). But this wont be for a while so I have some time to think about what I’m going to do. Personally I think it’d be great to study abroad but I worry a lot about everything that comes with it. Mainly the dog problem but also choosing a country and the expenses. should I just stay in Canada? My province has nothing to offer, really. This has been weighing on me for a while. It’s far away still but it’s making me anxious anyway. If I do study abroad learning the language is incredibly important and if I don’t start now how bad will it be by the time I leave? Anyway I’m getting a bit off topic, essentially he was not judgemental and answered my questions with equal weight, he didn’t make me feel silly for asking any of them and my ideology didn’t seem to put him off at all.

After our discussion I went home to stress about my research paper and upcoming finals. Fun fact, my finals were the following week, I barely had time to properly study so that was cool. So that was semester 2, what a rollercoaster, and semester 3 starts tomorrow! I actually don’t have my Political Science class until Thursday but I do have another history course that might be worth writing about, but we will have to wait and see. If you have any questions about pretty much anything please comment them, I like interacting with people on here.

Some posts on here from now on may be more like journal entries of the day and not focused on lectures, they will be properly labeled so if you want to skip out on those you’ll be able to see clearly which ones not to read.