SOCIAL SAFETY NETS
Survival of the best society in humane capitalism terms is the survival of a diversified collective where the capitalist paradigms of private property, division of labor, a regulated playing field, and personal self-interest are integrated with the just-society paradigms of equal opportunity, mutual obligations, economic fairness, and inclusion of all into the network of greater good. In practical reality, this balance, however imperfect, has been implemented and gradually improved through numerous welfare concepts of the past 150 years, one of which has become known as social safety nets.
Social safety net (SSN) programs are described by the World Bank as programs that protect families from the impact of various shocks, including economic shocks and natural disasters. Such programs typically are implemented as cash payments, in-kind transfers, social pension, public work, and school-feeding programs. Whereas they usually assist the most disadvantaged without necessitating prior contributions, they are not, however, universally defined or delineated sharply from social redistribution and development programs at large.
When distinguished from contribution-based social insurance and social security systems that commonly redistribute national income from high income to middle income groups via transfer and entitlement systems, SSNs provide for the poor or particularly vulnerable population groups. A practical differentiation of SSNs versus some other tax-based redistribution systems is perhaps that modern welfare states generally entail social security systems that are concentrated on education and employment security as well as temporary unemployment protection, health, and retirement transfers, disproportionately benefiting the broad middle classes but liable to fail when it comes to serving the poor and addressing the poverty trap.
Safety nets may not meet the key social redistribution requirement of reducing income inequality and could even come with larger regressive effects of increasing inequality at higher levels of the social pyramid; they aim, however, to address holes in social security which reduces inequality between the higher income strata but may not offer adequate safety in an event of destitution.