If You’re Not a Nationalist, How Come You’re in Favour of a Large Welfare State?

Argues that, if the interests of a country’s own citizens are no more important than those of foreigners, then nearly all welfare spending should be reallocated to international development

A reasonable definition of ‘nationalism’ is putting the interests of one’s own citizens ahead of those of foreigners. And a reasonable definition of ‘globalism’ or ‘internationalism’ is putting the interests of foreigners on a par with those of one’s own citizens. The nationalist impulse was captured rather aptly by Theresa May in her speech to the 2016 Conservative Party conference:

today, too many people in positions of power behave as though they have more in common with international elites than with the people down the road, the people they employ, the people they pass in the street. But if you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere. You don’t understand what the very word ‘citizenship’ means.

Of course, Mrs May’s remarks did not go uncriticised. So far as I can tell, however, few or none of May’s critics have taken their argument to its logical conclusion, namely that UK public spending requires a radical overhaul: the welfare budget should be slashed, and the international development budget should be massively expanded.

If the interests of a country’s own citizens are no more important than those of foreigners, it seems highly illogical to spend so much money on welfare, given how impecunious most foreigners appear to be. According to data compiled by the economist Branko Milanovic, even the poorest citizens of Western countries are materially better off than the vast majority of people in the world. For example, as the chart below illustrates, the poorest 5% of Italians are richer than roughly 59% of the world’s population, while the poorest 5% of Germans are richer than roughly 77% of the world’s population.

The UK government currently spends huge amounts of money on welfare and other social services for its own citizens, as the chart below indicates. For example, a full 31–35% of the budget represents simple transfer payments to poor and elderly citizens (who, it should be remembered, are quite rich by international standards). By contrast, a paltry 1.8% of public money is spent on international development. Note that only 11–16% of the budget is needed for essential state functions like emergency services, the courts and civil servants’ salaries.

I shall denote the allocation of public spending depicted in the chart above the Somewhere Plan, following David Goodhart’s nomenclature. Now consider an alternative allocation, which I shall dub the Anywhere Plan: spending on essential state functions and debt interest remains the same; spending on all other functions, except international development, is cut by 50% (from ~84% of the budget to ~42%); and spending on international development is expanded by 2200% (from 1.8% of the budget to ~42%).

Under the Anywhere Plan, welfare and social services for British citizens would be trimmed back to the level of middle income countries like Chile and Turkey. Note that these cuts would be more than an order of magnitude greater than all the austerity cuts that have taken place since 2010. At the same time, however, an additional £298 billion would be available to spend on people living in the world’s poorest countries. This princely sum could be allocated to emergency aid programs administered by the UN, to developing country governments, to international organisations like the World Bank, or to private charities like the Gates Foundation. Alternatively, it could be given directly to individual people in the form of cash transfers.

For those who believe that the interests of one’s fellow citizens should not be placed ahead of those of foreigners, the Anywhere Plan would seems to constitute a much more logical allocation than the Somewhere Plan. In this regard, it is noteworthy that the most successful conservative nationalist parties in Europe (such as the Sweden Democrats, France’s Front National, and Poland’s Law and Justice Party) combine strict anti-immigration policies with generous welfare benefits for natives.