ECONOMIC GROWTH AND THE WELFARE STATE: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE FUTURE OF ENVIRONMENTALISM.

This article presents a study concerned with the attachment or connection between support for economic growth and welfare-state liberalism/conservatism. This possible connection has import in a number of respects: 1) The American working class appears to be tied to both economic expansion and welfare-state expansion, at least in the short run, because of this class' economic insecurity. 2) The social resistance to economic growth is based among the middle class, on the other hand, and is largely liberal in orientation. 3.) The result seems that the American left is fractionalized in its critique of the political economy of environmental degradation, since left-leaning members of the middle and working classes likely differ in their attachments to economic growth.