Hayek, welfarism, and the deserving poor

Bengtsson, IngemarLund University,Lunds universitet,Fastighetsvetenskap,Institutionen för teknik och samhälle,Institutioner vid LTH,Lunds Tekniska Högskola,Real Estate Science,Department of Technology and Society,Departments at LTH,Faculty of Engineering, LTH (author)

Hayek sees poverty in its absolute sense as a factual problem, which the society has an obligation to deal with. Relative poverty, on the other hand, is not a problem with which the state should be concerned. Hayek approves the use of redistribution to decrease absolute poverty. However, redistribution of income for the sake of greater material equality would necessarily imply unequal treatment of men. This means that individuals will be used to fulfill the aims of other individuals; they will not be free. To Hayek, this is inacceptable. Other than the helping of the deserving poor to overcome poverty in its absolute sense, Hayek did not write much on poverty. The explanation for that is that Hayek viewed the problem of poverty mostly as a problem of the absence of prosperity. To Hayek, there is only one way to abolish poverty in the long run, and it is to make the society generally prosperous. A prosperous society is a society in continuous progress where all knowledge is put to its best use. Only in a free society, where the reward for supplying a good or service corresponds to the value it has to other individuals, will all knowledge come to use.

In:Poverty in Contemporary Economic ThoughtFirst Edition. | New York : Routledge, 2021. | : Routledge97804293313129780367354268

By the author/editor: Bengtsson, Ingem ...; Rauhut, Daniel; Lundahl, Mats; Hatti, Neelambar

About the subject

SOCIAL SCIENCES: SOCIAL SCIENCES; and Economics and Bu ...; and Economic History

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