bill: jennifer mittelstadt. what did you mean by your book title? jennifer: i am trained as a scholar of politics. we use the term welfare state to encompass all kinds of government programs that basically provide social and economic security to people. more broadly, we might think about social welfare as both public and private ways that societies are organized in order to provide social and economic security. so, the rise of the military welfare state considers what it means to have those programs, social, economic support programs in a military context. in the united states, the military has always played some kind of social welfare role, even when that has never been its main function. but, from the revolutionary period up to the present it has had programs which do provide economic and social security for people in the military. bill: in the early days, what did it look like? how did that start? jennifer: basic things like food, shelter and clothing. which, in the early modern period, could lure lots of people into military service when they mig

bill: jennifer mittelstadt. what did you mean by your book title? jennifer: i am trained as a scholar of politics. we use the term welfare state to encompal