Commenter “Z” over at Cheap Chalupas/Bargain Beans had this to say about poverty alleviation programs,
Welfare programs have never been about solving poverty. Even the most wild-eyed utopian dreamer knows that’s absurd. The poor will always be with us. Poverty programs serve three functions today. One is riot insurance and prevention. The people of Maryland, for example, have a real concern about the ‘citizens” in Baltimore burning the city to the ground. Giving them money to sit home and watch Springer all day is a cheap and bloodless way to deal with that problem. Welfare is just a part of the defense grid.
The other function is to employ an army of state workers that become poll workers, organizers and fund raisers for the political parties. The fact that tax money goes to operations like Planned Parenthood, for example, who then funnel it back to the politicians is a good example of the self-dealing at work. The massive amount of campaign money that flows from government unions back to politicians is not an accident.
Finally, these programs, their university training grounds and the non-profit barnacles attached to every poverty program are excellent dumping grounds for the dimwitted children of the ruling classes. Throughout the state systems you find relatives of state reps and party hacks. In Massachusetts, for example, the state is now largely run by a few Hibernia clans. There are families in Mass that have three generations of hacks.
CH’s advice to leftoids who believe they MUST uplift the poor or they’ll lose out on all that dopamine-boosting self-congratulatory feels is
1. Deal with it.
2. Make transfer payments to the wretched refuse contingent upon temporary or permanent sterilization.
Your typical SWPL high priestess won’t rest until she’s solved the problem of the poor? Solution: Policies which reduce the amount of poor people being born each generation. It’s simple, it’s effective, it robs the insufferable Salon crowd of their religious fervor. And that’s why it’ll never see the light of day.
