50 Things That Made The Modern Economy with Tim Harford

Women in politics are sometimes accused of consciously exploiting their femininity to get

a head in a male-dominated world.

Francis Perkins did that, but in an unusual way. She tried to remind men of their mothers.

She dressed in a plain, three-corned hat, and she refined the way she acted based on careful

observation of what seemed to be most effective in persuading men to accept her ideas.

Perhaps it's no coincidence that those ideas could reasonably be described as maternal,

or at least parental. Any parent wants to shield their children from serious harm,

and Perkins believed governments should do the same for their citizens.

She became President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor in 1933.

The Great Depression was ravaging America. A third of workers were unemployed.

Those in jobs saw their wages plunge. Perkins drove through the reforms that became known

as the New Deal, including a minimum wage, benefits for the unemployed, and pensions for

the elderly. Historians will tell you it wasn't Francis Perkins who invented the welfare

state. It was Otto von Bismarck, chancellor of the German Empire half a century earlier.

It was largely during Francis Perkins era that various welfare states took their recognisably

modern shape across the developed world. Details differ from place to place, measure to

measure, and time to time. But the same basic idea links every welfare state, that the

ultimate responsibility for ensuring people don't starve on the street should lie not

with family, or charity, or private insurers, but with government.

This idea is not without its enemies. It is possible, after all, to mother too much, and

if overprotective parenting stunts personal growth, might two generous welfare states

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