How Do We Get To Denmark?

Written by Jared Blackwell, Ally Hainlin, Nikolas LaMay, & Nathan Sumimoto

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

Our presentation is focussed around the hypothetical, yet very necessary, the question we as Americans must ask ourselves: how do we get to Denmark? For years and years now, the United States has been an outlier in the Western world with its highly means-tested liberal welfare state. A polar opposite from the social-democratic Nordic model, the American welfare state fails to provide even the most basic social safety net to its most vulnerable citizens. Even a shocking disparity exists between the percentage of GDP spending on social programs in the United States and Denmark: a difference of 18.7% to 28% respectively. Now more than ever it is clear that the liberal model does not provide sufficient protection for its populous, and the steps must be taken for the United States to follow the path of the rest of the Western world and adopt a strengthened welfare state, drawing from the social-democratic model.

In our research, we examined three different countries. First, we studied Denmark to get a closer look at what blueprint the United States could follow in order to implement a social-democratic welfare state. Denmark has stood out as a country with a long-standing social-democratic welfare state due to an “ideological assumption” which has maintained that a strong, supportive welfare state is a necessity. It also has the political framework, with leftist labor-oriented parties within a multi-party system, that maintain political clout in Denmark’s politics. Yet, while the longstanding success of the social-democratic model in Denmark has been successful for the country and its citizens, the ethnic homogeneity of the country has allowed for a troubling rise in nationalistic policies. This aversion to diversity in public good provisioning has remained a significant problem in the implementation of many welfare states, even in the United States as well.

For our second case, we chose to look outside of the West and look at a country that has begun to adopt many qualities of a social-democratic welfare state: Thailand. A hopeful case with an upward trajectory, Thailand’s expansion of its welfare state was brought upon by the challenges of globalization and the Asian financial crisis in 1977. Similar to the Dutch case, prominent political parties, in this case, populist parties, have pushed for both the protection and expansion of a welfare state. While the current welfare state still fails to provide consistent benefits to a widespread of the Thai population, we still believe that this case is an important one to include. The Thailand case stresses the importance of a multiplicity of political parties, which allows for a party to emerge that can generate traction and support for a country to adopt a social-democratic model in their welfare state.

Our final case was the United Kingdom, one that serves as a cautionary tale as to what the United States must avoid. While still identifying itself as a liberal welfare state, the United Kingdom’s welfare protections exceed far beyond the United States’ protections. Especially under the Labor Prime Minister Clement Attlee, Britain operated under the “Attlee consensus” that emphasized minimum unemployment and strong relationships with trade unions and other social democratic policy platforms. But as inflation and unemployment were quickly on the rise, Britain could not resist neoliberalism, with Margret Thatcher as the new Prime Minister, and the social-democratic elements of the welfare state began to fade away as neoliberalism and the Third Way reigned supreme. When labor unions lost their strike and bargaining power under Thatcher, the left in Britain also saw their main support base weakened by the Conservative government. The United Kingdom case proves how necessary a strong and vibrant labor movement is for the protected existence of a social-democratic welfare state.

From our three distinct case studies, we created a formal diagnosis of the United States’ failure to achieve a social-democratic welfare state and created some proposals that could be enacted to lead the way to Denmark. First and foremost, we assessed that the United States suffered from many political and cultural barriers that had prevented the adoption of a social-democratic welfare state. The representational and winner-take-all systems that are the foundation of our political structure inherently stifel out the electoral success of any third party that could have a platform in favor of labor and a socialized welfare state. Culturally, the rampant individualism that is put above solidarity and an abhorrent lack of class-consciousness in the United States has controlled the narrative against a solidaristic welfare state. Our first proposal is that the United States must make significant changes to its political system. Second, the government must provide support and protection for union and working-class members to create a sense of class-consciousness in the United States. Finally, and our most drastic proposal, the United States must face a cultural reset that generates widespread support for the fundamental ideals that are behind a social-democratic welfare state. The barriers to a welfare state at the level of one seen in Denmark are quite high, and our research suggests that the United States would have a major project to face in order to get to Denmark.

ANALYSIS SECTION:

Background

The whole point of national politics is to determine how a country will be governed, and one of the most critical factors of politics is deciding how resources will be distributed amongst a population. In fact, redistribution is seen as so significant that a whole group of political science theories, known as redistributivism, argue that inequality is a crucial determinant of how successful a democratic nation truly is. In order to combat inequality between a nation's people so that it can be successful, democracies have learned to provide public goods and social welfare programs to their citizens. Public goods are resources that anyone can use (non-excludable), and their availability cannot deplete when a person utilizes it (non-rivalrous), such as national defense or law enforcement. These types of services are meant to be universal in nature, so–at least in theory–the infrastructure and the way governments treat their citizens are fair. Social welfare programs are established so individuals and families can be granted a specific type of assistance, like child care assistance or unemployment compensation. Now, these types of services deliberately apply to explicitly outline people so they can receive help to meet a nation's goals, which varies quite considerably from region to region. Regardless though, when a country creates a system in which these benefits and services are granted to its citizens based on specific criteria, that state is known as a welfare state.

The most common occurrence of welfare states is within the democracies of the world, mostly residing within the continents of North America and Europe. The collection of these welfare states is known as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and their mission is to "promote policies that will improve the economic and social welfare of people in developed nations". When examining the high-income, as well as a few of the high middle-income, democratic countries of the world, there is a vast variation in the scope and depth of what these welfare states provide to their citizens. As Danish sociologist, Gøsta Esping-Andersen, established in his book, The Welfare State Reader, there are three types of welfare state regimes, all with distinct characteristics and social implications.

The first of which, known as liberal welfare states, is what the United States prescribes as, along with every other Anglo-centric nation, such as the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. This regime has a significant emphasis on only providing social welfare programs to those who are seen as needy or incapable of supporting themselves socioeconomically. In order to qualify for welfare within these liberal countries, individuals must be experiencing extreme poverty or disabling circumstances. Either way, liberal welfare states are very reserved and particular when it comes to providing social welfare programs or assistance to their citizens. Even when it is granted, only the most desperate individuals are allowed to not "participate in the market," meaning these social welfare programs are supposed to be temporary and as an absolute last resort. This criteria for eligibility for provisioning from the government is known as means-tested social assistance and has negative connotations associated with it, as well as social stigmatization. By that, it is socially undesirable to be receiving or have received welfare because the less fortunate and downtrodden individuals in society are believed to be lazy as well as manipulating the government into sustaining them. Especially within the United States, the poorer individuals in American society are seen to be irresponsible, unproductive, and burdensome to taxpayers.

The second welfare state regime, known as corporatism, is found most commonly in continental European countries, such as Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. Now compared to the ungenerous, minimalistic amount of social assistance liberal welfare states provide, corporatist welfare states have an expanded provisioning of social programs to their citizens. This model of welfare states has "social insurance with fairly strong entitlements", but has a few notable caveats associated with it. The first of which is that corporatist welfare states have a ranked system when it comes to the priority and generosity of granting social assistance. Precisely, if individuals work in the public sector as opposed to the private sector, they will receive more benefits and services than their privatized counterparts. Secondly, the entire corporatist system supports, and even demands that, to receive benefits from the government, there must be a traditional family structure with a male figure as the head of the household. The government funnels an entire family's worth of social benefits into the control of the male figureheads, where it is then assumed that they will distribute the benefits to the rest of the family members as they see fit. Though this model of welfare states has more substantial social services and benefits relative to those of the liberal model of welfare states, the way in which corporatist governments directly empower males can become problematic to a society's equality. The implementation of social assistance directly solely to males in families while children, and especially women, have to rely on their male family members enforces the ideas of patriarchy. This method also prohibits improvement in the ways of gender roles or norms and puts a heavy burden on independent women. For all the improvements that corporatist welfare states make upon the scope and depth of social programs as well as the services provided when being put next to liberal welfare states, corporatism limits the number of career paths citizens can take to be granted the full generosity of social benefits, along with limiting the empowerment of women.

The third and final type of regime within welfare states, social democracy, is also the most expansive and generous to its citizens. Social democratic welfare states reside mostly in the Nordic region of the world, with Denmark, Norway, and Sweden taking the lead in terms of social program provisioning. These nations all believe in the concept of social rights, meaning everyone is entitled to the services of education, healthcare, as well as a basic standard of living. Additionally, social democracies expand upon this principle by practicing de-commodification, which emphasizes that people are not and should not be dependent upon giving their labor power to the market in order to survive. These two principles are in direct conflict with the mantras of liberal welfare states, namely the United States, as Americans do not believe everyone deserves publicly provided services. Moreover, American society most definitely does not accept de-commodification, as endless hard work and the gradual climbing of the ranks in the market forces are held as the key methods to attaining happiness as well as success. In other words, it is expected of American citizens to "pick themselves up by their bootstraps," meaning to elevate one's self socioeconomically without any outside help from the government. Lastly, this model of welfare states exercises universalism when provisioning their extensive social welfare programs, meaning that everyone in society has an equal right to publicly provided benefits as well as services. When these doctrines and ideas are implemented in society, it translates into the empowerment of women as well as the expansion of personal freedom to truly pursue one's goals and aspirations, without the worry of becoming destitute. Unlike corporatist welfare states, where only the heads of households receive benefits, social democratic welfare states distribute benefits and services to everyone, men, women, and children. For example, Women are granted maternity leave for several months, as well as even men for paternity leave, so that parents can spend such a formative, special time as a family. Then, once parents gradually come back to work, the government provides high-quality childcare, so parents do not have to sacrifice their careers to look after their kids. Also, when those kids become college-age students, they will enjoy debt-free higher education, so they can pursue a profession or trade they enjoy, without worrying about the cost. In order to supply such a generous as well as universal welfare system, social democracies actually have a significant emphasis on achieving and full employment, despite also having the option of leaving the market forces via de-commodification. In other words, "the enormous costs of maintaining a...universalistic and de-commodifying welfare system means that [social democracies] must minimize social problems and maximize revenue income". Full employment is an essential pillar of the social democratic welfare state, but benefits to those who are not employed are distributed in a non-means-tested manner.

The Need For Change In The United States

The United States of America is the wealthiest nation in the world, with it being projected to gross over 22 trillion dollars in the year 2020 alone. But yet, over 38 million people are below the poverty line in the United States or about 12% of the entire population. In addition to that sobering truth, the United States of America also has over 27 million people within its borders who do "not have health insurance". Moreover, the U.S. has the most expensive healthcare system in the entire world, with each American paying nearly $11,000 per year on average. However, despite all the money that flows into the American healthcare system, which is roughly 3.6 trillion dollars a year, the life expectancy in the United States falls short when compared to other OECD countries such as France, Germany, or Switzerland. And when it comes to the American education system, the facts reveal it is just as broken and finically inflated as the healthcare system. As of now, in 2020, it is reported that there are "45 million borrowers who collectively owe nearly $1.6 trillion in student loan debt in the U.S." and "[t]he average student loan debt for members of the [c]lass of 2018 is $29,200". This severe amount of debt has occurred because of college and university tuition rates being continuously hiked up for more than 30 years now. Ever since 1987, there has been an upward trend in the costs and fees students must pay. Specifically, when looking at the average price of higher education during 2018, "the cost of an undergraduate degree has risen by 213% at public schools and 129% at private schools, [even after] adjusting for inflation". To add insult to injury, "49% of Americans...live paycheck to paycheck," and even worse, "53% say that they don't have an emergency fund that covers at least three months of expenses''. So, it is frankly impossible for Americans to cover the everyday cost of living in combination with the massively inflated prices of healthcare and education without incurring vast amounts of debt. Which is precisely the outcome for the wide majority of Americans today as "the typical...household now carries an average debt of $137,063''. Even though a lot of Americans go through these immense challenges, there are those at the very top of society socioeconomically who enjoy the luxury of high-quality healthcare, debt-free education, comfortable retirement plans, and then some. This grim disparity in American society has occurred as a result of the unmatched levels of economic inequality that has been increasing for decades now. When the Census Bureau began reporting on income inequality in 1967, America's "Gini index was 0.397," now, as of 2018, "it [has] climbed to 0.485". And unlike usual, a higher score does not represent a good outcome, as "[t]he Gini index measures wealth distribution across a population, with zero representing total equality and 1 representing total inequality". Another stark statistic to illustrate just how economically separated the top percentiles are from the rest of America would be that the "[r]ichest 0.1% [t]ake in 196 [t]imes [a]s [m]uch as [the] [b]ottom 90%" when it comes to average income: $7,225,756 compared to just $36,797. CEOs account for the largest share of America's top one-percenters, and their wages have been growing more and more while the rest of America's wages stay mostly stagnant. Specifically, large-company CEOs make 287 times as much as the average American worker working for them. One final, definite way to look at the economic disparity in the United States would be this: "The bottom 50 percent of U.S. residents only held about 2 percent of all of U.S. wealth [in 2019]," while "the top 10 percent held 69.4 percent of total U.S. net worth". All this is to say that the United States of America is and has been experiencing unprecedented levels of inequality as well as economic hardship. All of it must be addressed as well as redressed immediately, and the single best way to reverse these injustices is through rethinking the American welfare system along with effective redistributive policies.

Denmark As The Model

The welfare state model for which the United States should strive to follow is the social-democratic regime, and more specifically, Denmark's welfare state. The Northern European country of Denmark belongs to the smallest regime-clusters of social democracies and has been hailed by many (or ridiculed by others depending on the person you ask) for its generous social welfare programs. When put up against the other high-income, OECD countries of the world, this tiny country manages to be fourth in terms of social spending, while the United States for comparison is 21st out of a total of 36. The impressive state of Denmark has also managed to dethrone the United States as the ideal country to achieve "the American Dream," which essentially promises that "anyone...can attain their own version of success in a society where upward mobility is possible for everyone". But, there has been a strong linkage or correlation between "high levels of income inequality and low levels of social mobility," as well as low levels of the former and high levels of the latter. So, it is frankly impossible for America to achieve its own mantra with the insane amount of economic inequality it has. On the other hand, though, Denmark's citizens are thriving with social benefits from the cradle to seniorhood, and all these redistributive policies have caused Denmark to be among the most equal countries in the OECD, with a Gini index of 0.26 in 2016. High-quality, free education, as well as healthcare, "maternity or paternity leave," "guaranteed and paid...[n]urseries" for young children, "generous allowance[s]...[for] [f]amilies with children," and "[e]ven elderly care, such as senior centers' ' are all stables to the Danish welfare state, ultimately contributing to the reason why Denmark is ranked the second happiest country in the entire world. Meanwhile, the U.S. is continuing to become more and more unhappy, as America ranked its all-time lowest in 2019 at 19th place. So yes, despite the small stature of Denmark, its social democracy has left a huge impact on the world of welfare states, and has shown the wonders of a functioning welfare system. And despite Denmark being at the polar opposite of the welfare state world when compared to the United States, it would be in the best interest of Americans to follow the lead of the Danish people.

What The United States Needs To Do

Now that the United States' existing issues of income inequality, as well as its lack of adequate redistributive policies, have been explored, and now that Denmark's comparative success has provided a light at the end of this tunnel for America, it is time to examine what, definitively, the U.S. will need to be changed in order to attain the status of a social-democratic welfare state. Three notable changes would have to be made in the United States for the sentiments calling for a vibrant welfare system to be put into action. These include a severe rehauling to the American political system from the bottom up, the widespread expansion as well as support for unionization in the United States, and even a shift in the American psyche so mass mobilization in favor of social democracy can be generated.

The first of the changes, and most comprehensive one of them, would be to change the entire way the U.S. elects and conducts representatives. So, the United States has a representational electoral system, also known as a winner-take-all system, where there is only a single winner from district elections, as opposed to a party-list proportional system electoral system where multiple officials are elected from a district based on the number of votes parties received. This political system is what Denmark uses, and what it has allowed Danish citizens to do is establish third parties, which ultimately influence and push towards more generous, extensive redistributive policies. These parties are much smaller and niche in nature so they can coexist with other specific parties, which then form together to create what is known as coalition governments in Denmark's parliament system. This plurality in the Danish political system is different from the two-party system in the U.S., which essentially snuffs out any niche, relatively radical party movements as the Democratic and Republican parties must encompass a broader ideological spectrum in order to sway people's votes from the opposite party and stay competitive. Along with allowing multiplicity in American political parties and bolstering third parties, the general electorate must be expanded to fuel the existence of emerging parties. By that, the insidious, corrupt practice of voter suppression that targets low-income, rural minorities via recently implemented voter I.D. laws must be ended. And by doing this, there will most likely be an increase in the amount of support for more expansive redistributive policies as downtrodden Americans would benefit from social welfare programs. Voter turnout in the U.S. is notoriously known for being exceptionally low among the high-income democracies of the world, so the more barriers that are broken down in the process of voting, the better turn out there will be. Another way to achieve this goal would be by creating a national holiday on election days, so it would not be a complete inconvenience or even hindrance to voters who cannot afford to miss work.

The second proposal that would push the United States' welfare system in the direction of Denmark's social democracy is the protection of unions. The reason why unions are so essential to creating a welfare system like Denmark is that they foster class consciousness among the working class, which collectively empowers them to cooperate in search of better wages and employment benefits. Furthermore, unions are the basis for any generous welfare state as the density of unionization increases, left-wing parties who are responsible for the implementation of redistributive policies become more robust, which will ultimately lead to lower inequality as well as the decommodification of labor. So, in order to make Denmark's level of unionization happen in the U.S. as well, villainization and stigmatization towards union workers must be eliminated. It is also paramount that restrictive laws against joining unions in certain industries be abolished and instead actively incentivize the expansion of unions nationwide so class consciousness can awaken in America. The primary reason for why a significant socialist workers movement has never taken hold in the United States is due to the decline of class-based politics or motives. Many Americans do not believe that the United States has clear-cut socioeconomic divisions despite the ever-growing economic inequality, due to once again the idea of the "American Dream." Since this mantra insists that anyone can climb upward in society, there is complete ignorance of the fact that lower-class people and even now middle-class people are perpetually stuck where they are in society.

The third and final thing that the United States must do, if not anything else, is a cultural reset that generates support for a generous social democratic welfare state in the first place. Concretely, the cultural distrust and lack of altruism toward America's poor must be eradicated if any further progress is to be made. It has been argued and theorized that "America’s troubled race relations are clearly a major reason for the absence of an American welfare state". And this national mentality is once again caused by "American exceptionalism", which refers to how divergent the United States' behavior is compared to the rest of high-income, European countries. America's apparent lack of altruism, or willingness to help redistribute national wealth towards the oppressed people in society is in direct contrast to how the overwhelming amount of European nations, especially Denmark, view poor people. For they "believe that the poor are poor because they have been unfortunate" as opposed to the United States, where "the poor are perceived as lazy". The reason why Americans have adopted this racially charged notion is that "racial minorities are highly overrepresented among the poorest Americans," and this creates animosity not only towards minorities but also redistributive policies as a whole because it "will redistribute disproportionately to these minorities''. And as a result, "[o]pponents of redistribution in the United States have regularly used race-based rhetoric to resist left-wing policies," which only perpetuates the resistance towards a social-democratic welfare state. Americans are also very hesitant against the idea of big government alongside a capitalistic market-based economy, but this very coexistence occurs in Denmark, where economic success is still maintained, and personal liberties are preserved. In conclusion, the single most effective thing America should do to achieve social democratic status is recovering race relations and denouncing the Western ideals of stringent individualism as well as the survival-of-the-fittest mentality in favor of a more collective, socialist approach to policy making.

CASE STUDIES:

Denmark

Denmark exists to many as a model of social democracy in part due to its longevity from the Second World War, through the neoliberal revolutions of the later 20th century, and well into the present day. While it is true that the Danish welfare state is held together by an “ideological assumption,” that a society free from class conflict can and should be achieved through social democratic programs, the system did face challenges. The economic crises that faced many social democracies in the 1970s, characterized by the conflict between keeping inflation or unemployment low, posed a challenge to the Danish status quo. In 1983, the Conservative Party would start the first of three coalition governments, and until 1993 these coalitions carried a program of reform designed to lower inflation and balance the state's budgets. While privatization was pursued to the extent that Denmark's Social Democratic Party deemed was pragmatic, and an increase in unemployment was one cost of the “modernization” of the Danish welfare state, the Conservative Party decade could never threaten Danish social democracy. Ironically, it was not until the return of a Social Democratic Party lead coalition in 1993 that policies that ran against the principles of social democracy, such as making benefits more conditionalized on job-seeking, which signaled a recommodification in the Danish welfare state. This turn to the “Third Way” was against a less extreme iteration of similar trends in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Danish social democracy has proven its general resilience to the neoliberal turn by being a multiparty system that frequently relies on coalition government. This has ensured that there needs to be significant compromise and consensus to meaningfully overturn the social democratic consensus, and this would also have to overcome the pressure from political parties that support the welfare state, as well as bureaucratics and trade unions who have incentives to maintain social democracy. Given the general popularity of social democracy among wide cross-sections of the Danish electorate, there is political incentive for parties opposing reformist governments to defend social democracy. This had unfortunate consequences in the 1990s, where voters that felt alienated by the Social Democratic Party’s recommodifying turn chose not to turn to the left-wing Socialist People’s Party (for it was in coalition), and instead often turned to the anti-immgration Danish People’s Party.

This has troublingly encouraged Danish governments to endorse more restrictive and assimilationist policies, to the point that from 1983 to 2002 Denmark shifted from being one of the most liberal to one of the most conservative immigration regimes in Europe. Such a trend shows both the dangers of mass alienation in social democratic parties and the ability for Social Democratic governments to actively support nativist policies in order to “preserve” welfare states. While Denmark’s political system creates incentives to preserve social democracy long term, the aversion to diversity in provision of public goods remains a salient issue and challenge for social democracies everywhere.

Thailand

The Thai welfare state was barebones in the 1980s, and restricted to social protections for civil servants. Social protections were first expanded to the private sector in 1990, but it was not until the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997 that incentivized the Thai government to pivot to a “paternalistic welfare state,” as the crisis began to endanger Thailand's human development. This materialized as widespread relief funds designed to help the unemployed, but also targets marginalized groups such as women, children, and the elderly. Accessibility to public services was also constitutionally enumerated in 1997, paving the way for the development of Thai social democracy. By the 2000s, a universal social protection scheme was introduced by a populist government, and by 2009 another political party expanded on this by adopting “the principle of universal social security for all Thai people.” This progressive development of greater social protections and services has developed a consensus among many Thai political parties on the existence of state healthcare, minimum wage, state pensions, child welfare, and education. Globalization and inequality can be isolated as two strong causal factors for the expansion of these programs, suggesting that exposure to greater economic pressure and the creation of “losers” via economic crisis and global competition increases the demand for social democracy. This provides some hope for the development of social democracy in the periphery of the neoliberal order, the marginalized in society can incentivize and entrench economic protections during crises.

There are limitations to Thai’s social programs that leave it short of the status of full-fledged social democracy. Given that a great deal of these programs are social protections from unemployment during times of recession, durable poverty alleviation is often not an outcome of these policies. Even worse, the payments in social protection programs often do not meet the poverty line in Thailand and only 60% of the population can regularly access these programs, leaving millions in the informal sector behind. In this way, Thai public spending is still not well targeted, which can leave even progressive and pro poor policies such as free secondary education can be riddled in disparities between rich and poor in terms of quality and access. These issues are exacerbated when spending for public goods such as education and healthcare is targeted on secondary and tertiary institutions in urban areas and without sufficient outreach to poorer rural populations.

Despite these limitations, the trajectory of Thailand's social programs point upward, both in a political sense and a material one. As development continues to push forward social movements that call for better programs in order to cope with changing economic conditions, one can expect more populist politics that will continue to expand these programs. Moreover, increased revenue through development in Thailand is linked with greater spending, suggesting that continued proggressive taxation can have redistributive effects in the long term. The alignment of capacity and incentives in Thailand's political economy, along with a track record of expanding programs, gives hope for the future of Thai social democracy.

The United Kingdom

From the election of Labour under Clement Attlee in 1945 until the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979, Britain operated under a socioeconomic consensus that was social democratic in nature. This so-called “Attlee consensus” embraced by both the Labour and Conservative Parties, was characterized by an emphasis on minimizing unemployment, cultivating strong relationships with the trade unions, egalitarian reform to education, and expansion of public housing. Such continuity in policy was particularly helpful in reducing inequality, and the labor movement was widespread and confident during this time. While the Labour Party was the sole standard bearer of the British left, the independent power of the trade unions gave them influence over both political parties.

The tension between inflation and unemployment would be particularly pernicious in Britain during the 1970s. Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan was unable to hold off mass strikes in 1979 due to a commitment to pay freezes in the face of spectacular inflation, and the Winter of Discontent would catapult Margaret Thatcher into power. Thatcher represented the epitome of the neoliberal reaction, and the Conservative government replaced the Attlee consensus with a program emphasizing inflation over unemployment and monetary policy over fiscal policy. Moreover, Thatcher’s government was overtly hostile to trade unions, passing a myriad of anti-union laws and confronting strikes rather than negotiating with leaders. The general erosion of union power, paired with mass privatization of previously nationalized industries and a weak and divided Labour Party throughout the 1980s, guaranteed the collapse of the British union movement. Reforms to education were also halted, continuing Britain’s notoriously classist divisions between private “public” schools and public “state” schools. Council homes were also sold off en masse, ending an affordable alternative to private rents and opening real estate to speculation.

After over a decade of neoliberal Conservative Party rule, one can only imagine the hope left-wing activists must have had with the ascension of New Labour in 1997, and the bitter disappointment those same individuals must have had by the end of Labour rule in 2010. Rather than a restoration of the Attlee consensus, New Labour represented a marginally kinder iteration of Thatcherism. The trade unions no longer had the ability to compel governments to their will, which enabled Blair to continue a program of privatization in the public sector. While Blair also committed to reducing child poverty, and succeeded to some degree in this regard, inequality and poverty remains higher today than in 1979, proving New Labour's failure to address the root causes of economic strife in modern Britain. The deindustrialization of Britain, along with increased financialization of its economy, proved disastrous during the 2008 financial crisis, but the neoliberal consensus was only able to turn to austerity as a long term solution. In the case of Britain, one can see the importance of labor organization outside traditional political parties as a means of upholding social democratic consensus. Moreover, Britain serves as a warning for how social democratic structures can be reversed and replaced by neoliberalism in times of economic crisis, particularly given how unlikely it seems for social democracy to be restored there anytime soon.