15. Fill in the gaps with the words and expressions from the text:

1. The state plays a key role in the protection and promotion of the economic and social … .

2. The US spent 16% of its … on health care in 2008.

3. A larger income tax for people with higher incomes is called a … tax.

4. Welfare states can affect the … of wellbeing.

5. This helps to reduce the … gap between the rich and poor.

6. It is based on the principles of … of opportunity.

7. The general term may cover a … of forms of economic and social organization.

8. It is a complex mix of federal, state, … , employer and individual funding.

9. The welfare state involves a … of funds from the state to the services provided.

10. Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland … a system known as the Nordic model.

17. Find in the text English equivalents for the following:

Обращать внимание
Доход
Уменьшить
Здравоохранение
Добровольное пожертвование
Пособие
Ответственность
Распределение
Тратить
Гражданин

17. Translate into Russian:

Minimal provisions
Progressive tax
Income tax
GDP
Old-age pension
Unemployment benefit
Industrial state
National sickness program
Equitable distribution
To develop a welfare state

17. Fill in the prepositions:

1. a state … a uniform national sickness program

2. to be funded … taxation

3. to extend … smth.

4. to refer … smth.

5. a variety … forms

6. spending … health care

7. … per cent … GDP

8. to reduce the gap … the rich and the poor

9. to be based … equality principles

10. public responsibility … smb.

17. Now read the third text of this Unit. It touches upon the problems of shortcomings of welfare state. Welfare state: Criticism and Response

Early conservatives, under the influence of Malthus, opposed every form of social insurance. As economist Brad DeLong put it: "make the poor richer, and they would become more fertile. As a result, farm sizes would drop (as land was divided among ever more children), labor productivity would fall, and the poor would become even poorer. Social insurance was not just pointless; it was counterproductive." Malthus, a clergyman, for whom birth control was an abomination, believed that the poor needed to learn the hard way to practice frugality, self-control, and chastity. Traditional conservatives also protested that the effect of social insurance would be to weaken private charity and loosen traditional social bonds of family, friends, religious and non-governmental welfare organizations.

Karl Marx, on the other hand, famously warned against the paternalistic reforms advanced by liberal democrats arguing that measures designed to increase wages, improve working conditions, and provide welfare payments would be used to dissuade the working class away from the revolutionary consciousness that he believed was necessary to achieve a socialist economy.

Opponents of the welfare state have expressed apprehension about the creation of a large, possibly self-interested bureaucracy required to administer it and the tax burden on the wealthier citizens that this entailed.

Political historian Alan Ryan, however, points out that the welfare state stops short of being an "advance in the direction of socialism," noting in particular that: "its egalitarian elements are more minimal than either its defenders or its critics think". The modern welfare state does not set out: “to make the poor richer and the rich poorer, which is a central element in socialism, but to help people to provide for themselves in sickness while they enjoy good health, to put money aside to cover unemployment while they are in work, and to have adults provide for the education of their own and other people’s children, expecting those children’s future taxes to pay in due course for the pensions of their parents’ generation. These are devices for shifting income across different stages in life, not for shifting income across classes”.