Contemporary welfare states remain in need of powerful policies aimed at protecting against new social risks, inclusion through work, and more equality in education and the labour market. Clearly, in less stratified societies, such as in Scandinavia, there is less scope for Matthew effects and these social policies are likely to be more effective.

This brief considers the concept of tax justice or fairness in relation to each of these broad goals: the collection of revenues to finance public expenditures, the regulation of social and economic behaviour, and the distribution of economic resources. 

Any society can propose a minimal set of circumstances such that persons who are disadvantaged should be compensated. This will lead to policies which equalize opportunities, if not entirely, then at least to a degree.

In the United States, ’welfare‘ and the politics of welfare – cash assistance for families, generally female-headed single-parent families with children – have been treated as a separable realm of policy, and too often as synonymous with all of anti-poverty policy.