By Jake LeBrun
- These two main types of systems spread largely along the lines of economic ideology. English-speaking states adopted the British system, in which compulsory contributions were made by all employers and wage earners. Australia, the United States, New Zealand and independent Ireland all held more staunchly to free-market liberalism and had their own versions of this basic model. Nordic states like Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark as well as states favoring strong labor unions and socialist ideology, like Czechoslovakia, Spain and others followed the voluntary (according to labor union membership) model.
- By about 1950, nearly every industrialized nation had adopted some version of one of these types of plans. Communist nations were one exception, as their command economies were directed by a central bureaucracy. Other exceptions were states that controlled great mineral wealth belonging to the government. Citizens of Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Kuwait and other such nations are virtually all on welfare, albeit generous enough to afford enviable lives of leisure.
- In the past few decades, many nations have switched from the Ghent system to a paradigm more like that of the anglophone nations. Economists debate the reason for this shift, but possibilities are that advances in telecommunications and the globalization of the economy has de-emphasized the need for heavy industry, which de-emphasizes the need for trade unions. As of 2010, only Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Belgium maintain it.
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