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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsYou Won't Believe Conservatives' Absurd Theories They Think Will Cure Poverty
http://www.alternet.org/economy/conservatives-and-povety***SNIP
Yet in the face of these findings, Goldfarbs paper recently ran a noxious editorial blasting the idea of expanding the social safety net, despite America's extreme current levels of income inequality and misguided economic policies that obviously redistribute wealth toward the rich. Could this be because the editorial board of the Post is caught in the grips of a bizarre belief based on the magic-making capacities of a flightless bird and a supernatural appendage? Lets explore.
Back before the 19th century, American conservatives advocated whats known as the turkey basket approach to poverty. You help the poor through charitable gestures, like bringing poor families in your community a turkey for Christmas. Poverty was a natural state and part of God's plan, after all, not a social problem. The poor were orphans and widows and such, and giving them alms was a religious duty.
But gradually, conservatives began to consider the ideas of Enlightenment thinkers who tried to approach poverty in a more systematic way. Conservatives preferred the ideas of Adam Smith, the father of free-market fundamentalism, who suggested that a mysterious power called the invisible hand of the market would take care of the poor, providing them with a free, expanding economy that would bring a universal opulence which extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people.
So now conservatives had both a bird and a supernatural agent to solve the problem of poverty (though truthfully, some were relieved to dispense with the Turkey altogether and just abandon the poor to the Hand). Unsurprisingly, this approach didnt work. In the aftermath of the Great Depression, which woke up most thinking people to the mythology of a free-market paradise in which everyone would enjoy opulence, massive government programs were needed to counter the tsunami of poverty and prevent complete social chaos. Thanks to these programs, which included protections like unemployment insurance, America prospered, poverty was dealt a body blow, and income inequality shrank for the next several decades.
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You Won't Believe Conservatives' Absurd Theories They Think Will Cure Poverty (Original Post)
xchrom
Dec 2013
OP
quaker bill
(8,224 posts)1. Actually I do believe conservatives think this.
They are quite wrong, as usual, but that never slows them down on anything.
Gothmog
(145,242 posts)2. Tax cuts are magical
The GOP is convinced that tax cuts are magic and that tax cuts will cure all problems. This theory has been proven wrong by the bush years
Aristus
(66,369 posts)3. Well, just go get a job!
Working 80 hours a week in three minimum wage jobs will lift you out of poverty, right? Right?