The rise and fall of social democracy
I have long believed that we are living in an age of conservative social democracy where both major parties are roughly happy with our current size of government. It appears that this thesis is picking up supporters all over the shop — including Mark Bahnisch, Andrew Norton & John Quiggin.
I see the 20th century as the “century of the state”, where the angloworld moved from liberal (ie moderate libertarian) democracy to social democracy. At the beginning of the 20th century tax made up under 10% of GDP. Now it is about 40% in the anglosphere. The social democrats have won. We are now living in the wet dream of the fabian socialists of 100 years ago. We are living in the world of Whitlam/Labor and Howard/Liberals are defending it.
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