What Is Poverty?

When every benefit is received as a right, there is no place for good manners, let alone gratitude.

In the welfare state, mere survival is not the achievement that it is, say, in the cities of Africa, and therefore it cannot confer the self-respect that is the precondition of self-improvement.

…a system of welfare that makes no moral judgments in allocating economic rewards promotes antisocial egotism.

via Theodore Dalrymple:
What is Poverty?
.

This entry was posted in Charity, Economics, Government. Bookmark the permalink.

One Response to What Is Poverty?

  1. Steve Clay says:

    Depressing story, but good analysis of how a blindly paternalistic state can be (surprise) a poor parent. NYC is offering to transport struggling folks to relatives willing to take them in, which seems like a better idea than public assistance. Everyone in those newly cramped households will have an incentive for the guests to get on their feet ASAP.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>