On Hayek's Thoughts Of Social Welfare

Spontaneous ordercan be considered, as a major feature of Hayek's politicalideas, and his economical thoughts is well known as calling for market competition.These ideas gestated Hayek's social welfare thoughts collectively. On the basis ofintroducing his economical and political ideas, this paper expounded Hayek'scriticism and proposition towards western social welfare. First of all, this paper discussed Hayek's political ideas from three aspects.The first one is his opinion about governments and power. The second one is hiscomprehension of freedom and responsibility. The third one is the oppositiontowards the principle of average. Hayek's economical thoughts mainly include twoparts. One is the opposition to the economical scheme and distribution justice.Theother is advocating economical freedom and market competition. Secondly, this paper expatiated on Hayek's criticism to the western socialwelfare. Above all, Hayek animadverted on welfare states from three aspects:welfare states had three wrong motivations; it threatened freedom principle andconnived at income guarantee. Next, Hayek criticized the western social securitysystem. The criticism was based on the irrationality of income reallocation andstate monopolization, and the dissimilation of social insurance. Thirdly, this paper expounded Hayek's proposition to the western socialwelfare. Firstly, Hayek analyzed the reason and the solution of poverty problem.Next, he demonstrated the rationality of social security system, and advocated that II华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文the western countries should implement the system of minimum income guarantee.Finally, Hayek gave three reform ways to social security system, the first one isavoiding state monopolization and advocating market competition; the second oneis avoiding the centralization of state power and advocating the decentralizationoflocal government, and the last one is upgrading individual responsibility. Ultimately, this paper gave an evaluation to Hayek's social welfare thoughts.Firstly, the paper points the impacts of Hayek's social welfare thoughts on thepractice of social security in the world. In the next place, it compared the divergentthoughts between Hayek and Barr, and expounded their different thoughts inwelfare states and social insurance. Finally, this paper contrasts the three welfarethoughts Social democracy, Neo-conservatism and the Third -way in 20thcentury,and pointed out their differences in the welfare principles and the system design.Inthe end, this paper gave a summarizing to Hayek's learning thoughts.