The New Politics Of Poverty: The Nonworking Poor In America [Paperback]

Lawrence M. Mead (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 21, 1993

Thirty years ago, the great national debate was how to help ordinary, workaday Americans achieve the good things in life. Today, we are preoccupied with—and increasingly divided over—how to cope with the problems of poor and dependent Americans, most of whom cannot or will not work at the jobs available. Mead provides overwhelming and disturbing evidence that passive poverty—the failure of most of the poor to work at all—reflects defeatism more than lack of opportunity. In this controversial book, Mead proposes concrete steps to overcome the inertia of the nonworking poor trapped in the welfare system. If the poor return to work, he suggests, American politics would focus once again on the problems of the working Americans.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Railing against the nonworking poor is Mead's ( Beyond Entitlement ) central preoccupation here. The former research director of the Republican National Committee maintains that today's "nonworking" poor are singularly different than earlier generations of the poor in that they refuse to work. He concludes that they lack moral authority and, therefore, the right to make demands upon society. He calls for "work enforcement" and the "reassertion of public authority," while arguing against today's "dependency politics which is largely about how to cope with nonworking people." Mead relies heavily on statistics to prove his points, but his interpretations are highly subjective. This is social policy in the hands of a zealot, and fervor more than facts are the draw. First serial to Commentary.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Mead examines the divergent conservative and liberal political responses to the increasingly threatening social and economic costs to America of a passively nonworking poor underclass, predominantly negative contributors to a mainstream society believing in advancement through active individual effort. As in his Beyond Entitlement ( LJ 12/85), Mead argues for a work requirement for employable recipients of public assistance. This, he reasons, would not only alleviate the poverty but would help individuals realize some measure of control over their lives and affirm the concept of personal responsibility. A challenging work, with very extensive notes, this is appropriate for upper-level undergraduates, policy makers, interested professionals, and laypersons. Previewed in "On the Campaign Book Trail," LJ 3/15/92, p.110-12.
- Suzanne W. Wood, SUNY Coll. of Technology, Alfred
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (July 21, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465050697
• ISBN-13: 978-0465050697
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,431,154 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Politics of Liberal Theory?, September 30, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The New Politics Of Poverty: The Nonworking Poor In America (Paperback)

Mead writes a book that is not only well researched, but also understands the psychology of poverty.

Before I go on let me explain the obvious by way of the fact that there are poor people that don't want to work, and poor people that do want to work. What's been happening is that there is a shift from the latter, to the former.

Those that want to work deserve all the support that our government can provide; however, there is a "just give me a welfare" check mentality that is quickly becoming popular amongst the disadvantaged. This mentality is fostered by liberal programs, and then these people are harvested for their votes like so much cattle.

The problem is what has been termed "the politics of pity". Liberal programs do not treat these people with any sort of respect. Instead, lip service is paid to their woes in return for their votes. Studies show that the more impovershed a person is, the more likely they are to vote liberal. Therefore, conservative plans have it in their own best interests to empower voters to work. However, while liberal plans are given impressive sounding descriptions, the DETAILS of liberal plans are less than generous.

THE POLITICS OF POVERTY says that when the USA is in an economic downturn, the country votes Democratic; when the country is doing well, they always vote Republican. While many country-club liberals enjoy feeling morally superior by feeling sorry for poor people, the ugly and hard fact is that they need the poor in order to support their own positions. Other People's Poverty equals their own power. Consider this: during the last 19 months of the George Bush I presidency, the Democratic legislature refused to bring to debate any appropriations bills, even those supported by Alan Greenspan. It was basically a politically-sponsored recession.

While Mead hints at this, he doesn't come right out and say it. However, Lawrence Mead bears out all of this with hard data. Liberals that enjoy feeling morally superior to others by feeling sorry for the poor (and these liberals have never worked with the underpriviliged) will say that this study lacks "compassion", (the childish will call me and other realists immature names) but that doesn't change the fact that the statistics are hard, fast, and true. Many poor don't want sympathy, they want a JOB. And it's just common sense that if you pay someone to do nothing, you need to provide an inventive for them to do something.

"If there were no poverty in the USA, nobody would vote Democratic"

18 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Mean Spirited and Intellectually Dishonest, May 29, 2001

By 

Tim Hundsdorfer (Boulder, CO United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The New Politics Of Poverty: The Nonworking Poor In America (Hardcover)

There are three things that strike me about The New Politics of Poverty. First, the mean-spirited attack on poor people, but especially poor children. Second, poor logic and weak evidence is presented as indisputable fact. Finally, the extremely important role this book has played in American politics.

The argument that poor people are poor because they are in some way defective-especially that they are lazy-is a recurrent theme throughout this book. If you accept this argument, you are likely to find TNPoP compelling reading. The call for poverty programs to be work tested, that is, to make government assistance dependent on willingness to work, is supported by anecdotes, logic and statistical proof. All of it is presented in a way that is generally easy to follow. It is, however, based on a weak theoretical foundation. This foundation is that people who do not work are not worthy of government assistance. This is a neo-liberal argument that has been implemented not only by conservatives, but also by the "New Left," politicians like Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Gerhard Schroeder.

The weakness is that if we accept Meads' argument, we are willing to argue that children and the infirmed are not only not eligible for government assistance, but that they do not deserve it. This is a classic argument against the neo-liberal idea, even before there was a neo attached to it. Hobbes has often been critiqued on the problem of social contract and the "unable." Mead has nothing to add to this argument, instead ignoring it or blaming impoverished mothers for the plight of their children.

Perhaps I am naïve, but I believe that most Americans do not, ultimately, believe that children and the infirm are unworthy of government assistance. Thus the internal logic of this book is weak. Statistics are used convincingly, but often in a way that is easily critiqued, for example using obviously spurious relationships to prove a point. At one point, Mead cites an offhand remark by a graduate student as evidence-which borders on being intellectually dishonest in my opinion.

Nevertheless, this book seems to represent a large portion of the policy scholarship that has led to the passage of the Personal Responsibility Act and the ultimate victory of the neo-liberals in reshaping the American welfare state (such as it is.) The model here may have been weak, but its political argument was very convincing and the winning side succeeded in portraying the poor as being victims of their own laziness and irresponsibility. The great lesson of TNPoP is not about poverty, but about social construction as a means of winning a policy debate using faulty logic and evidence in a convincing way.