The middle class was, for decades, the great ally of the Social State model that we know today. The idea was consolidated that the State should guarantee not only the protection of the most vulnerable, but also widespread access to quality public services. This vision is based on an implicit pact: everyone contributes, through taxes, and everyone benefits, to a greater or lesser extent, from the solidity and predictability of the system.
In recent decades, this harmonious conception of a State in which no one was left out has brought, in addition to an unparalleled democratization in access to fundamental goods and services, stable social peace. Everyone finances, everyone benefits. Whether in vulnerability or in normality.
However, when we look at the country, this balanced and functional scenario is not what we see. Today we find ourselves at a critical breaking point that is already putting the foundation of the system, trust, into question.
Unfortunately, the promise of universalism increasingly comes up against the scarcity (or mismanagement) of resources, which means that services do not function in a way that guarantees the provision of fundamental services to everyone, at least with the required level of quality.
This is why more and more Portuguese people are disillusioned, because they feel that the State has done little or nothing for them. They remember that, in the public school where they attended, there was a lack of teachers and material conditions. They know that the National Health Service often has endless waiting lists for appointments and closed emergencies. They live day-to-day in contact with public services that appear before them as a maze of bureaucracies and problems. They see the State as more and more of a problem, and less and less of a solution.
Specifically, this is where the middle class begins to distrust the system. If you feel that you contribute much more than what you benefit from, you also stop feeling part of the great agreement of wills that is the cornerstone of the Social State.
This distrust has consequences. Despite paying high taxes, many Portuguese people are forced to take out private health insurance, send their children to private schools or make retirement plans on their own. They pay twice: once, to the State, and once, to the market. This brutal financial effort undermines the idea of universalism and creates a sense of abandonment that fuels skepticism and, inevitably, softens the ground for populism to triumph.
In fact, ensuring that basic services work, Democrats will be more effective in shielding the country from experimentalist radicalism than they have been. We can never hope to be able to combat populism in politics, whether in parliament, on television, or on social media, when schools, hospitals and courts fail the populations.
If nothing is done, the risk is that of a vicious circle: the middle class, disillusioned, moves away from the public system, demanding less from the State and resorting even more to private solutions. This reduces political pressure to invest in the quality of public services and the State becomes a mere guarantor of minimums, aimed only at the poorest. The universalist model that once supported social balance can thus give way to an unequal welfare model, emptied of legitimacy and ambition.
This, for those who believe in a minimal state, does not seem to pose much of a problem. However, I think the risk is general. We can discuss whether the State today needs to be larger or smaller. But if you propose, as today, to have a certain role and it doesn’t work, the loser, at the end of the day, is the regime.
This article is written, at the author’s option, under the Old Orthographic Agreement.
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