The Welfare State in Trouble

We all know about persons who are complacent: they gloss over an important flaw in the functioning of something—a human body, a marriage, an economic policy, or a society—and try hard to convince themselves and others that nothing is really wrong. If they advocate any action, once the symptoms of trouble can no longer be ignored, they, typically, will prescribe aspirin when radical surgery is required. What about a term for the opposite fault—that is, a term that would designate a person who forever diagnoses fundamental disorder and prescribes radical cures when the difficulty at hand may well take care of itself in time or only calls for mild intervention? I propose, for want of a more compact term, the “structuralist (or fundamentalist) fallacy,” since those who are affected by this trait always speak of structural problems and the need for fundamental remedies.

Economists have long arrayed themselves into the two camps that are implicit in the t...