Welfare After Beveridge: sacrifices

The classic welfare state did not address itself to problems of consumption; there was not much to consume.  Today, climate change entails profound changes in consumption; everyone will have to make sacrifices, consuming less.  How should such necessary sacrifices change our thinking about the provision of welfare — whose classic moral logic was to give people more, to expand aspiration, rather than to shrink desire.

This is 1 in a series of 4 public lectures that Richard Sennett will deliver on Welfare After Beveridge.