Present-day welfare states may survive as long as bureaucracies and governments can create "optimistic" illusions among taxpayers-voters. This setting is destined to fail and indirectly to open up the pathway for a constitutional welfare state. Mazzola and Wicksell first offered a constitutional view on both public choice and public goods, but the intellectual godfathers of the genuine alternative to the present welfare state are Buchanan and Tullock in the early sixties and Rawls a decade later. The virtuous circuit obligations-entitlements-rights, which the institutions of present welfare states helped to make crumble, may be restored behind the veil of ignorance. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Public finance and welfare: From the ignorance of the veil to the veil of ignorance / Eusepi, Giuseppe. - In: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR & ORGANIZATION. - ISSN 0167-2681. - STAMPA. - 59:4(2006), pp. 460-477. (Intervento presentato al convegno 1st Erfurt Conference on Fiscal Sociology tenutosi a Erfurt, GERMANY nel JAN 11, 2002) [10.1016/j.jebo.2005.06.005].
Public finance and welfare: From the ignorance of the veil to the veil of ignorance
EUSEPI, Giuseppe
2006
Abstract
Present-day welfare states may survive as long as bureaucracies and governments can create "optimistic" illusions among taxpayers-voters. This setting is destined to fail and indirectly to open up the pathway for a constitutional welfare state. Mazzola and Wicksell first offered a constitutional view on both public choice and public goods, but the intellectual godfathers of the genuine alternative to the present welfare state are Buchanan and Tullock in the early sixties and Rawls a decade later. The virtuous circuit obligations-entitlements-rights, which the institutions of present welfare states helped to make crumble, may be restored behind the veil of ignorance. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
