This interdisciplinary collection of essays takes a hard look at the gap between increasingly costs expectations of welfare including other social needs and available revenues. It shows that the issue is not a purely economic and certainly not a party-political one, but that it has significant ethical, some call it spiritual, components. From providing initially a broad account of welfare economics it presents contributions from political philosophers and theologians as well as accounts of successful initiatives to indicate the direction for solutions which will correspond to the complex realities of post-modern society.