can a country with limited means provide a welfare state service?

Answer 1

Yes, a country with limited means can provide a welfare state service. However, exactly what services and their quality will be limited if their means are limited. A welfare state is merely a system that a country adopts... it may or may not provide different services on a large scale (in other words, it may only provide food assistance or housing or healthcare to certain individuals who meet set standards, not everyone) and the quality level may vary greatly.

Your use of the term "welfare state service" is general, and could be a little vague, so I'll use an example: Cuba is a country rich with natural resources. They have a great climate for growing tropical produce and a have historically had an educated population and strong work force. Now, in Cuba, the government pretty much provides an education and healthcare to all residents, and makes sure everyone has housing and food. It is a communist country in theory, so that takes "welfare state" to the extreme. The trouble is, Cubans' overall standard of living is very low otherwise. Their education is generally decent, but loaded with political and social propoganda, and thier healthcare care probably can be described as decent, too, because they have trained quite a few doctors and people don't have to pay much if anything to receive healthcare, but they lack the means to buy some drugs and medical equipment, and their doctors are paid very little compared to free-market countries, so there is little personal incentive.

In Cuba, the State actually owns and controls practically all property, and all the means of production, which means they control any wealth the country generates and how it is dispersed. Poor managers (and a strict dictator), a lack of personal incentive and foreign economic conditions (like a U.S. embargo, and the fall of the Soviet Union which used to subsidize Cuba) have prevented people in the country from enjoying prosperity since the Communist Revolution in the 1950s.

Communist North Korea is another country that has lots of natural resources and generally industrious people. Again, the government owns and controls all the means of production and provides education, healthcare, housing and food to its residents, but they have a relatively very low standard of living and periodically experience a famine in which food has to be rationed and some people actually starve! And so the concept of "limited means" you use needs to be understood in the light that a poor management system can squander a country's means.

In a Capitalist system, the means of production (that is, the ability to use resources and turn them into goods that have utility and economic value--this is the only process that generate wealth) are privately owned and controled. Free market countries enjoy a private incentive to generate wealth and reap those benefits, which tends to generate vastly more wealth overall.

In a generally capitalist and free-market system, a govenrment funds a welfare system using revenue it acquires by imposing income taxes, estate taxes, in some countries a value-added tax, a sales-tax, real-estate transfer taxes, and from other fee programs and even lotteries.

The bottom line is, a welfare state is merely a process, and any country that adopts that process will try to take funds from whatever sources they can think of to fund it legally (and in some cases, push the envelope or change laws to allow for different sources of governement revenue). A government's ability to provide welfare services will be limited by the revenue it takes in. If taxes and fees are excessive (or there are other regulations that hinder free markets and private ownership and control), this can have a negative impact on how much total wealth might be generated, and how much revenue the state might realize to fund its programs.

Answer 2

It all depends on their taxing policy, welfare comes from the people that pay taxes on their income. If there is a lot of poverty , the tax base is low and that leaves nothing to give away to people that won't or can't work for the things they need to live. Welfare money comes from tax paying citizens, not the government. Governments do not generate wealth, they collect wealth from citizens who have it. In other words, if there is nobody working and paying taxes there is no money for the government to give away

Answer 3

Yes it / she can do so, if its rulers are good economists.
If the people who are running the government are good economists, they can provide a welfare state service with limited means.

Answer 4

Yes. If they want the little blood-sucking recipients to drain all the money from the system.

But then, the wealth producers would leave long before they're sucked dry. (See "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand.)

Answer 5

um ?