The Future(s) of the Welfare State

The article explores the future of the welfare state towards the 2030s and 2040s. The primary focus is on possible directions, tensions, and ethical dilemmas facing welfare states in the wider context of the development of human civilizations. The article first maps the current well-known tensions that institutions of the welfare states grapple with. It then advances to investigating the ethical foundations of the twenty-first century welfare state by examining such issues as growth dependency and people-centrism. It eventually re-evaluates the claim made by the great Finnish welfare state theorist Pekka Kuusi (from the 1980s) on the urgency of transform the prevailing worldview held in modern societies to better grasp humans as “children of the Earth” instead of mere “brain creatures.” Thus the article suggests the discovery of a new basis for welfare states in the century characterized by poly/metacrisis and the era of Anthropocene.