The welfare state, the greatest social science innovation of the 20th century, has been the target of much criticism over the last 50 years. Some of them are justified, others not at all. The legitimate criticisms have been mainly concerned with the performance of the welfare state, i.e. the lack of realisation of some of the objectives for which it was conceived in the first place, such as eradication of poverty, precariat, regulation of invisible labour, scope and quality of public services. Unjustified criticisms focus on the effectiveness of the welfare state, questioning its legitimacy and even accusing it of having morally negative effects on citizens, such as on the stateless recipients of welfare. Since the distance between one type of criticism and the other is by no means diminishing, it seems that the range of rational arguments and empirical data is rather limited, and that is why more and more emphasis is being placed on possible alternatives to the welfare state. This paper presents ten alternative concepts, but before that, it deals with one of the basic problems that is least discussed, although it should serve as one of the criteria for assessing the alternatives discussed, namely the (un)meaningfulness of work.
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