When economist William Beveridge dreamed up the postwar welfare state he wanted to fight five 'giant evils' - want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness. Fast forward 65 years and it seems the last New Labour government grew an Unfair State that fuelled - not fought - one of those evils: idleness.

There are jobs that American citizens will not do. We can talk about why that is. We can talk about how our welfare state is broken, how we encourage people not to work, but that doesn't help the farmer pick his peaches this summer.

The welfare state creates its own victim/client constituency. By making individuals free and independent, we reduce the need for 'charity' to those truly needy citizens what we can certainly afford to help through real charity.

The cradle-to-grave welfare state diminishes individual initiative and can breed a pervasive sclerosis.

The state exists to serve and protect every citizen, regardless of colour, creed, race or religion - and the welfare state should exist to and protect the populace in the same non-discriminatory and universal manner.

The original purpose of the welfare state was to lift people into self-sufficiency, not to create a permanent underclass dependent on taxpayers.

The future of Norway isn't about competing on being the cheapest but the most innovative. We have an expensive welfare state, and the only answer to continue that way is to become more competitive, especially on knowledge.

Over time, the welfare state has become dysfunctional in a surprising way. But in a way it became a victim of its own success: It became so successful at prolonging life, that it becomes financially unsustainable, unless you make major changes to things like retirement ages.

The problem of how we finance the welfare state should not obscure a separate issue: if each person thinks he has an inalienable right to welfare, no matter what happens to the world, that's not equity, it's just creating a society where you can't ask anything of people.

The 1935 Social Security Act established 65 as the age of eligibility for payouts. But welfare state politics quickly becomes a bidding war, enriching the menu of benefits, so in 1956 Congress entitled women to collect benefits at 62, extending the entitlement to men in 1961.

We live in a welfare state society - one that is already bloated and overburdened. We cannot continue to absorb and support an endless stream of people who will inevitably need legal residents to subsidize their lives.

The Tories have built a system defined by insecurity - from wages to job contracts to housing to the welfare state. If they want to understand why socialism - long dead, never coming back, or so they thought - has undergone a revival, this is why.

We cannot be the welfare state of the planet.

I'm not going to be known as the Sinn Fein Minister who did the bidding of a Tory administration which is focused on decimating the welfare state.

Charities should not become the junior partner in the welfare state; whether or not they provide services funded by Government or, indeed, receive grants from Government, they must remain independent and focused on their mission.

The welfare state is collapsing all around us. There are people that realize that we can't go on this way, but I'm not sure how many people realize how close we are to the collapse of the U.S. financial system.

There was no welfare state, and people had to rely mainly on the Poor Law - that was all the state provided. It was very degrading, very humiliating. And there was a means test for receiving poor relief.

What we're putting forward is the most radical reform of the welfare state... for 60 years. I think it will have a transformative effect in making sure that everyone is better off in work and better off working rather than on benefits.

The biggest and most deadly 'tax' rate on the poor comes from a loss of various welfare state benefits - food stamps, housing subsidies and the like - if their income goes up.

Healthcare is the cornerstone of the socialist state. It is the crown jewel of the welfare state.