A Defence of the Welfare State!

Lecture by Ola Innset about his latest book The Battle for Values – On the Welfare State and the Country That Got Too Many Rich People, at Loftet, Tou Scene.

The number of billionaires is growing every year, and they spend vast sums to influence politics and elections. The wealthiest are attacking public welfare and government spending.

Ola Innset’s new book offers a critique of the ideological foundations of this offensive, partly as a response to Martin Bech Holte’s The Country That Became Too Rich.

By challenging entrenched ideas about value creation and productivity, Innset argues that it is not the case that the private sector creates value while the public sector merely consumes it. His main argument is that the welfare state both can and should be expanded — and that this is precisely what’s needed to prevent the further rise of far-right movements.

Ola Innset is a historian and author of both non-fiction and fiction. He is also the author of The Market Turn, about the history of neoliberalism, and works as a researcher at the Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture at the University of Oslo.

The event is open to all!