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A good time to rethink welfare
“No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent… And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” There is “no more powerful articulation of mankind’s universal vulnerability and of our necessary participation in bonds of mutual obligation” than John Donne’s , says Gavin Rice. It’s the moral instinct behind the creation of Britain’s welfare state. Yet as life expectancy rises and the relative size of working-age populations shrinks, we are forced to ask: what is this “continent” that supports us?
