In 1919 several great industrialists in the United States, among them David Rockefeller, Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie, signed an agreement that launched an initiative that shortly afterward would be called welfare capitalism. On the strength of the restitution principle, the basic assumption of this agreement envisaged that companies should take responsibility for the well-being of their dependents and their families. In this way the company gives back a part of the profits that resulted from those who competed to create them. This is a typical principle of American cultural origin: to give back post factum (after the fact) a part of what was obtained thanks to the contribution of the community that contributed to the successful implementation of a productive activity. Welfare capitalism immediately had some success in the United States, but it did not take long for its Achilles heel to become evident: it did not satisfy the requirement of universalism. The compact did not have value erga omnes (for everyone), since it was a private action on a voluntary basis. This is why, exactly twenty years later in Britain, the liberal John Maynard Keynes wrote that if welfare is desired as the model of social order, it can only be universal (Keynes 1939). Indeed, a particularistic welfare would not guarantee social peace, neither would it serve to reduce inequality. Thanks to this insight, Lord Beveridge, a member of the British Parliament, succeeded in having the famous “Beveridge Report” approved during wartime in 1942. From this were launched the National Health Service, free assistance to the handicapped and elderly who were not self-sufficient, and free education for all until a certain age. This was the beginning in Britain of the famous model of the welfare state: the state, not the company, must take care of the well-being of its citizens by putting the principle of redistribution into practice. Beveridge’s phrase has become famous: the state must take responsibility for citizens “from cradle to grave”. This model represented an authentic triumph of civilization, which then spread from Britain to the rest of Europe, in different versions and with different outcomes.