 A second broad category of institutions that supplement or correct market outcomes can be summarized under the term “welfare state”. It attempts to provide responses to criticisms of markets concerning poverty, unequal outcomes, and a lack of equality of opportunity. The most basic tasks of the welfare state are to secure the socioeconomic rights (cf. e.g., Marshall 1992) of citizens who cannot earn an income in the labor market, and to provide some degree of equality of opportunity. Many political philosophers have emphasized the importance of redistribution for these purposes (see also Fleurbaey 2012); the emphasis on redistribution has almost overshadowed questions about the direct distributive consequences of different markets and how these might be influenced by regulation (but see Dietsch 2010). Welfare state institutions can take on different forms, and can be organized in different ways, from a minimum of care for the destitute to a large array of social services, such as public education and a public health service. Recently, some thinkers have even argued for the introduction of an unconditional basic income for individuals, to make sure individuals are not at the mercy of those who control the access to resources (e.g., Van Parijs 1995, Widerquist 2013). Decisions about such institutions are often taken to be trade-offs between the efficiency of markets and the desideratum of some degree of equality of income and wealth. As Okun writes: “Any insistence on carving the pie into equal slices would shrink the size of the pie” (1975, 48). It is not clear, however, whether this picture adequately describes economic reality. It is often based on the assumptions that higher taxes stifle people’s motivation to work hard. But whether this is true depends, among other things, on the question of whether individuals are mainly motivated by the desire to earn money or whether they might also have an intrinsic motivation to provide certain goods and services (cf. Roemer 2012). Some measures, such as a public education system that gives every child a chance to develop his or her talents, might lead simultaneously to more equality and to a larger economic pie, because the increase in human capital more than outbalances all possible losses in efficiency through the taxation that pays for the education system (cf. also Okun 1975, 81ff.; on the efficiency of various non-market institutions see also Heath 2006). As a matter of fact, in some countries such as the Scandinavian countries a strong welfare state coexists with a flourishing market economy, undermining claims of mutual incompatibility. In addition to its role in redistribution, the welfare state can also have a wider, cultural meaning: as Cunningham (2005) argues, it can help to overcome the fear created by the existential risks to which individuals are exposed in pure market societies, and which might be an important factor behind the allegedly more egoistic and more materialistic culture in such societies. For example, in a well-functioning welfare state individuals do not have to maximize their income for the sake of saving for periods of unemployment, but can participate in a social system that insures them against unemployment. A welfare state could also encourage risk-taking by lessening the costs of failure, which might spur innovation.  [10]