U.S. President Joe Biden has decided to go big. In response to the economic and social crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic, his administration has launched a historical expansion of government spending and the American state. Some have heralded this as social democracy coming to the United States, with the Biden administration deliberately harkening back to former U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. But what should we make of these emergency, make-shift measures? Will they mark a lasting expansion of the U.S. welfare state?
