Hayek supported social security, workmen’s compensation, and even a guaranteed minimum income. In The Road to Serfdom, he writes: “There is no reason why in a society which has reached the general level of wealth which ours has attained that … security should not be guaranteed to all without endangering general freedom.” He distinguishes between “security against severe physical privation, the certainty of a given minimum of sustenance for all”—which he considered a legitimate government concern—and “the security of a given standard of life, or of the relative position which one person or
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