The Wealthy Banker's Wife

             Synopsis & Book Critique of Linda McQuaig's "The Wealthy Banker's Wife".
             Synopsis of the author's main argument and rationale:
             Linda McQuaig in her piece focused on our welfare state performance and status, The Wealthy Banker's Wife, discusses the current status of our social transfer systems, their efficiency and the fear of their dissolution by various government actions.
             The argument is kicked off with the criticism of the usual comparison of our social economy with the US's and how irrelevant that should be. McQuaig describes her own personal experience witnessing American social failures, and illustrates data highlighting the level of inadequacy the US welfare system has reached.
             She describes how the US has turned away from an egalitarian approach to free market standards where social welfare and various social benefits are targeted strictly towards the poor. She argues this not only makes the actual systems weaker and weaker over time since the poor don't have much leverage defending themselves, but also weaken the total economical structure of the country as a whole over time.
             In response to allegations that a strong welfare state is a burden on the economy and weakens the general output, the author provides example of the western European and Scandinavian nations where social spending is in some cases above half their GDP and still have flourishing economies. She wonders how can such economies make it, while the world second highest GDP per capita, Canada, supposedly cannot!
             The author stresses that while the US with all its might is managing to suppress the poorer classes and slowly but surely put the social transfer systems in the hands of private organizations, Canadians in general do have a different view of how they'd like their state's systems to run. The hated concept of 'Big Government' in the US is not such an awful factor to Canadians who are ha...

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The Wealthy Banker's Wife. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 05:34, March 29, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/39782.html