In the last video lecture we were talking about the structure of the American welfare state. When we compared it, and we looked at, we compared it around pensions. Healthcare, education, cash to people that are poor and otherwise. And in-kind benefits to people that are poor and otherwise. And we saw that the US had relatively smaller as a proportion of GDP. Although larger as a portion of full income welfare state. And that we had a great deal more that was provided by employers. We spent less on pensions, more on health care. And substantially less on income transfers to the poor. So in this lecture, I want to move to another topic which Professor Garfinkel. Will talk about in more detail later. And that is the question of Floors, Platforms, and Safety Nets. So Floors are benefits that everybody gets. Platforms are benefits that only people that are relatively well-off get. And Safety Nets or benefits that go to the poor. And you'll see here that floor benefits dominate in all nations. So all nations, most nations are substantially above 75 or 80%, 70, 80%. Of their welfare state is in floor benefits. In the US case, universal benefits are less, they're still large, they're 40%. But they are not as significant as in other nations. And in the US this area of platform benefit. Benefits that are given to people who already have quite a lot is much larger. And we'll see in a minute as we go a long a lot of these are health care benefits. And pension benefits that go to people who get paid relatively well. And then, the US spends more on safety-net benefits. These are benefits that bail out people that are in trouble. Welfare programs, in that sense. And so, most of the other nations that we're talking about provide universal benefits. And therefore, they spend less on platform benefits for the well to do. And safety net benefits for people that are in real trouble. So this is a chart that shows you in another way this comparison. It's from the New York Times, about ten years ago. And it shows that, those that are making less than 20,000. Then 20 to 35,000 or 50,000, 50 to 100,000. And then, more than a 100,000. And then, likewise, doing this again for how benefits skew to the wealthy. And you'll see that if we're talking about Food Stamps and Medicaid. Those benefits go very much to the poor. And these are safety net benefits that go to the poor. But if we're talking about employer healthcare benefits and home mortgage deductability. These benefits skew very much to higher income people. And as a result, the US welfare state is producing a much more generous. Welfare state than are comparable nations to those people that are relatively well off. And spending quite a lot of money on people that are very poor. But people that are in the middle here. Are getting much smaller proportion of government expenditures. And we're spending more money on platform programs. And safety net programs than we are on floor programs.