Expressive Choices

Why do we have a bigger welfare state than is good for us?

But then, before I tell you why, I’d better justify that assertion. So just take the case of my own country, the UK. Here, the government spends nearly half of everything its citizens earn—and then it borrows. And the biggest chunk of its spending goes on the three big-ticket welfare-state items: health, education and welfare (including housing). 

That makes the welfare state a significant cost on taxpayers. And of course high taxation is very damaging for individuals and businesses, particularly small and new businesses, while the interest payments on the government’s debt raises those costs even further and reduces its scope to spend on something useful.

There are also the dependency and incentive issues. With state welfare focused on the poorest, many find themselves trapped in dependency. If they try to improve their own condition, they find their benefits being reduced, often very quickly. That tapering, combined with the high taxes needed to sustain the welfare system, discourages individuals from seeking work, or moving to better-paid jobs. The result is a lower national income, and reduced labour market flexibility, leading to a fall in the productivity of the economy.

State welfare is also poorly targeted and wasteful. The amount of money we spend on it could make our poorest citizens relatively rich; but much of it lingers in the pockets of those who administer the system, while much more goes to people who do not genuinely need it. Nor does it really help people out of poverty: it simply pays them cash, rather than looking at what they need in order to prosper.

Moreover, state welfare crowds out more targeted and effective interventions such as private charity and philanthropy. And it suggests to taxpayers that their obligations to their fellow citizens have been dealt with for them, making them less willing to take on responsibility themselves. 

I could go on, but you get the picture. We all know the system is inefficient, badly targeted, bureaucratic, wasteful and often counter-productive. So why do we keep voting for it?

I think the answer may lie in what economists call ‘expressive choice’ — as opposed to the phenomenon of ‘instrumental choice’. An instrumental choice is one such as you would make in a marketplace. Perhaps you want a new coat. You go into the shops and choose one from the variety of different coats on offer. You pay your money, and your choice turns into reality—you have the new coat you wanted.

Expressive choices are those such as you make in elections. The chance of your vote making an actual difference—being the single vote that decides if one candidate defeats another, or whether a referendum succeeds or fails—is miniscule. Usually, it is millions to one. So, unlike your coat transaction, you do not always get what you choose. You vote for one candidate, but another succeeds. You vote for one policy, but another is put into effect.

How, then, do people respond to that? One answer is that they vote for things that make them feel good. You can vote for anything you like, because your choice is not actually going to make a difference. So, people vote for high-spending pro-welfare candidates because they see it as a way of ‘helping the poor’—and indeed a way of ‘helping the poor’ that is absolutely costless to them (unlike the coat transaction). So why not?

The trouble is that it isn’t absolutely costless. The costs of all those welfare state programmes mount up, and voter-taxpayers feel the burden of it. And the inefficiencies and disincentives mount up too, which burdens them and everyone else too. 

I don’t see any way out of this welfare ratchet in a democratic system. Perhaps we need to lay down limits on what that system is there to do, and can do and can spend. But I can’t see politicians voting for that.