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 | This article's lead section may be too short to adequately summarize the key points. (September 2016) |
The modern welfare state has been criticized on economic and moral grounds from all ends of the political spectrum. Many have argued that the provision of tax-funded services or transfer payments reduces the incentive for workers to seek employment, thereby reducing the need to work, reducing the rewards of work and exacerbating poverty. On the other hand, socialists typically criticize the welfare state as championed by social democrats as an attempt to legitimize and strengthen the capitalist economic system which conflicts with the socialist goal of replacing capitalism with a socialist economic system.[1]
- ^ Clarke, Peter (19 November 1981). Liberals and Social Democrats. Cambridge University Press. p. 2. ISBN 978-0521286510.
On purely socialist criteria, social democratic reform is always a failure since all it does is invent new devices for strengthening the system, which should itself be attacked.