'A Conservative Case for the Welfare State'

Mark Thoma comments on A Conservative Case for the Welfare State, by Bruce Bartlett, Commentary, NY Times at 'A Conservative Case for the Welfare State'.

Thoma comments that:

If conservatives want to support the welfare state out of the desire to defend capitalism from "socialists and communists" -- to defend it against the instability that high degrees of inequality cause -- no problem, though it's interesting that they would acknowledge that the system itself can lead to societal inequities that are so dangerous the government needs to intervene to fix them.

Emphasis Mine

Thoma is pointing to the contradiction in the conservative's position. This is the realisation that there is a flaw in the capitalist model through its instability and inequality. Yet, Marx said that this is the fundamental law of Capitalism: Wealth concentrates naturally under Capitalism.

However, Bartlett contends that American conservatives are blind to this. They are fervent believers in the functioning of the market to solve all of societal ills despite having no empirical evidence that it does.

Yet, Bartlett does not examine the primacy source of wealth that underpins the welfare state of Western Europe — third world debt. This debt funnels wealth from the Third World in order to bribe the proletariat into accepting the current state of affairs. This is also the reason that debt forgiveness is never going to be achieved under Capitalism. The stability of the system is too dependent on the harsh exploitation of the rest of the world.

Thoma's own opinion on why government intervention is required is that:

I prefer the efficiency argument (which is not to say that the other argument has no merit, it does).

Here, Thoma sidesteps the political meaning of Government intervention by appealing to efiiciency. This is a neutral term to cover the brutal reality of the welfare state.