Marshall And Moss Economic Security Analysis

Though they were born and raised in different centuries and on different continents, both Thomas Humphrey Marshall and David Moss have written thoughtfully and thoroughly on the government’s role in safeguarding the welfare of its citizens. Marshall was more concerned with directly addressing individual citizens’ economic security through a redefinition of the meaning of citizenship, including social rights, which are broadly defined but incorporate economic security, in addition to civil and political rights. Moss, on the other hand, was more focused on the government’s ability to reduce and/or reallocate risk. He discusses the various different types of risk reduction and reallocation, and how, contrary to contemporary popular opinion, they can sometimes cause economic growth, rather than strangling businesses through unnecessary and burdensome regulations. Though their approaches differ and their goals may not have aligned perfectly, both wanted a sense of financial stability and …show more content…
Moss argues that the government has the ability to reduce risk or reallocate risk, whether by shifting the risk from one party to another or by spreading the potential risk across multiple parties so that one party does not suffer all of the consequences. Marshall, on the other hand, would be more direct about supporting individual economic welfare and security for all citizens. I think that Marshall would argue that Moss’s plan does not go far enough at least in respect to obtaining economic security for all of a government’s citizens, since the focus was, in the 19th century, on businesses, the focus could theoretically revert back to business and leave ordinary individual workers and citizens potentially without economic security, or it could be stopped completely, leaving both businesses and people at