Posted on 11/30/2019 5:37:41 AM PST by karpov
How can government get rid of poverty? It’s a question that gets asked not in a society where almost everyone is poor but in one giddy with surging growth and concerned about those who seem left behind—a society whose leaders have “an almost mystical belief in the infinite potentials of American society.”
Those are the words of Paul Jacobs, a prominent left-wing journalist and activist a half-century ago, quoted by Amity Shlaes in “Great Society: A New History.” Just as she presented a skeptical alternative to New Deal historians’ accounts of the 1930s in “The Forgotten Man” (2007), Ms. Shlaes now offers an illuminating alternative to sentimental reminiscences of liberals’ attempts in the 1960s—actually, in the years starting around 1963 and ending around 1972—to banish poverty in America. Lyndon Johnson’s raft of Great Society programs—from Head Start and Community Action to Medicare and Medicaid—is a centerpiece of this period, of course, but it is only part of the story. The longer arc, as Ms. Shlaes shows, is a “mystical belief” in America’s potential and the government’s often misguided attempts to achieve it.
Her account is original and persuasive, presenting the leading poverty warriors not with scorn but with sympathy and piercing insight. Her subjects include the gentle socialist Michael Harrington, with his background in the Catholic Worker movement; the religious intellectual and Kennedy in-law Sargent Shriver, the Peace Corps’ first director who was drafted to head LBJ’s Office of Economic Opportunity; the up-from-the-working-class professor Daniel Patrick Moynihan, plucking politically inconvenient truths from overlooked data; the student-journalist and activist Tom Hayden, pursuing endless causes and a radical vision of “participatory democracy.” These are basically good people brimming over with good intentions.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
How does one get beyond the WSJ paywall?
this is typical b.s., it was all and still it for democrats to buy votes by giving folks free shit from my money.
I use "Bookmarklets" which were presented here on FR on April 23 this year. I always forget the name of the tool, so I do a Google Advanced Search for "Paywall" to find it.
Or go straight to "Bookmarklets". You want to use the one called "Paywall Killer."
Gonna give it a try - Thanks.
“These are basically good people brimming over with good intentions”
These are basically people who have no compunction about confiscating the wealth of others to distribute it in a way that makes them feel good about themselves. Throwing other peoples’ money at problems, with no thought of freedom, limited government, and individual responsibility.
Amity Shlaes book “The Forgotten Man” written in 2007 was outstanding. She made a very compelling case about how terrible the New Deal was and how it severely prolonged the depression and increased the depths of the depression.
Based on her reputation from that book, I have every confidence she will bring the same critical, conservative eye to this new book of hers.
Why would you summarize this as “typical BS” so quickly without having read the article or the book (and probably knowing nothing about the author)?
The Forgotten Man was a great read so I expect this one will be also. It couldn’t appear at a more appropriate time, what with all the Dems pushing socialism to make everyone healthy, wealthy and ignorant.
The closing paragraph sums it all up nicely.
Ms. Shlaes’s chronicle is not just a story of how good people’s good intentions went wrong. It is also a story of how the assumption that the near future will closely resemble the recent past can lead even the best intentioned and most well-informed people to pursue policies that turn out to be mostly counterproductive and often destructive.
Sure, happy to help. After expiring a lot of cookies, you’ll get a bunch of twitter links. You sometimes have to try several of them to find one that works. For this article, the third Twitter link was paydirt. The first two took me to the paywall protected page. You just to have work you way down the list of links.
Most of all, they [i.e., policy makers, bureaucrats, politicians] were intoxicated with the unexpected postwar prosperity, which was producing so much revenue that Lyndon Johnson thought he could pay for both guns and butter and which prompted Richard Nixon, in 1972, to sign a revenue-sharing law that diverted federal money directly to the states. The ascetic Michael Harrington, in 1964, blanched at asking for $1 billion to fight poverty, but the ebullient Sargent Shriver was happy to pony up. “We have plenty of money,” he later said.That perpetual Democrat belief is on display at every single Democrat "debate" in 2019:
"We have plenty of money. I propose we spend $30 trillion."Nothing has changed in the Democrat party in almost 70 years. As Ms. Shlaes writes, they learn nothing from the past and failures of previous programs."I'll see your $30 trillion and raise you $10 trillion."
"You pikers! I'll spend FIFTY trillion and give EVERYTHING to EVERYBODY for FREE! Vote for me."
I heard Amity Shlaes make an excellent presentation of The Forgotten Man at Politics and Prose in DC. Then, after her presentation, came the comments/questions from the floor... and they were all vicious attacks on her and her research. Quite eye-opening for me as to the bullying closed mindedness in DC.
That idea was lbj’s creation of the democratic party plantation!!!
im talking about the concept, not the author.
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