Which might have seemed clever to radicals in 1966, but it has never been tried in real life, in America or anywhere else. American welfare rolls did, in the 1970s, sometimes get rather swollen – but only because of sheer economic distress, not any political strategy or “welfare enrollment drive”; and the political reaction was not to “establish a guaranteed national income” but to vote Reagan into power.
Anyway, what’s that got to do with the Obama Admin, or anything that’s happening now?
I think we DO guarantee everyone food and shelter. I don’t know anywhere in the US or any developed nation, where people starving on the street are just left to die.
Nope. For legal residents, food, yes (assuming the prospective recipients of food stamps can produce adequate documentation). Shelter, I can guarantee not – we were a few hours from being in precisely that circumstance, by act of God.
Have you been feeding them? I haven’t been feeding them. Just today I heard someone mention Second Harvest Food Bank and how they were running low for a while. I don’t know if they’re still running low.
Yes, people are left to die in the streets here. Do they starve or just go hungry?
I don’t know. I’ve been getting regular e-mail from the GOP since last summer (I don’t know why, I didn’t sign up for it.) and they’ve failed to mention it.
What I find interesting is that the libertarian idea of a negative income tax (which I favor) is this exactly. Well, not this strategy, but a minimum income. The more conventional approach might be housing, food, & medical allowances.
Right-wingers “keep” talking about this? Funny, I’ve never heard anybody talk about this. In fact, I’ve never heard of this in my entire life. This with a degree in Political Science, no less.
Clearly, this is one of the most important topics of our day, though, else you would not have brought it up, so please allow me some time to get up to speed and put my ear to the ground so I don’t continue to miss what they “keep” talking about.
Our local paper has a People’s Politics forum and Cloward-Piven was brought up for discussion way back in July. Not that it made a whit of sense, but the Reich-wing whack jobs were onto as far back as then.
Well, I dunno, this sounds more like the followers of some oddball-fringe theory trying to see if they can use the messageboard/blog community to gain some traction. The oddball fringe theory being that the Cloward-Priven Strategy is really about to be sprung onto us now. We’re going to see all sorts of claims that one or another long-feared leftist strategy is about to strike. I wouldn’t be surprised if next week there’s a rumor that Obama’s going to make Puerto Rico a state to get the extra votes.
Interesting theory, though, from the original professors: that once the welfare-enrolled poor reached large enough numbers, that would force the government to adopt socialistic policies for the whole of the population? As Barney Frank would say, what planet did they spend most of their time in? Couldn’t they imagine that the answer from the government would be to cut back on the welfare benefits?
Like I said, “other boards” – specifically Free Republic, and the General Board of Literotica.com – with frequent references therein to Glenn Beck (whom I don’t watch).
