The European Welfare State Has a Future Again
As new and old EU countries disunite, neoliberalism is in retreat.
Union protesters in Brussels.
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In the years since the 2008-09 financial crisis, cracks have appeared in the global hegemony of neoliberalism. The pressure to favor free markets and reject the social-welfare model (whose history I described in Part 1 of this article) has moderated somewhat.
In the U.S., President Barack Obama succeeded in installing the first general health-insurance system in the country's history. Thus Washington has moved closer toward the European welfare state model. It did so not for purely altruistic reasons but partly on economic grounds. The predominantly privately financed American health-care system was far too costly, precisely because of its social selectivity.