ASSYRIANS. – Archer drawing his bow – Assyrian bas-relief. Rome, Museo Barracco.
In all the principal countries, a confused and in some parts disordered body of legislative norms awaits and requires an organic and coordinated restructuring that will unify, within a general vision together with the insurance system, the work of preventing the risks of labour. In this ongoing action, which focuses on the essential elements of insurance—namely, the concepts of savings and risk—the notion of social solidarity is gaining ascendancy. As a result, the welfare wage comes to represent, more than a share of individual savings (even if compulsory and directed toward social ends), a form of participation in the needs of the community through a general system of burden-sharing that realizes a comprehensive plan of social welfare, or better still, of social security or protection.
Within this conception, social insurance schemes are thus regarded as a direct instrument for countering the imbalances produced by the economic order with solutions inspired by the principles of justice and charity.