From The Quotable Mises — surrounding passage

“The Welfare State is merely a method for transforming the market economy step by step into socialism.”

Planning for Freedom , p. 219 The policies advocated by the welfare school remove the incentive to saving on the part of private citizens. On the one hand, the measures directed toward a curtailment of big incomes and fortunes seriously reduce or destroy entirely the wealthier people’s power to save. On the other hand, the sums which people with moderate incomes previously contributed to capital accumulation are manipulated in such a way as to channel them into the lines of consumption.