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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A sorely needed antidote to welfare statism,
By
This review is from: The War On the Poor (Hardcover)
«Welfarists do not call what they do mercy or charity; they prefer the rubric social justice. They attempt to merge Justice and Mercy by dissolving them in sentimental goo. Mercy is blinded by the goo, and Justice can see. In consequence, injustice becomes pervasive, and merciless government preys upon the citizenry in the name of Justice.» - Clarence B. Carson.A few years ago, while riding on a train, I heard a teenager explain to a group of friends: «As I see it, to be right-wing is to be for the rich, and to be left-wing is to be for the poor.» Unfortunately, the political philosophy of most adults today- including many college professors- is not much more sophisticated. Everybody «knows» that if there are so many homeless people around, it is because, contrary to «laissez-faire rhetoric», wealth does not «trickle down», and because stingy right-wingers in the government are blocking the necessary legislation. Well, think again. In *The War on the Poor*, Clarence Carson shatters the myth that the left is «for» the poor, showing how the failure of decades of government programs to eradicate poverty is due neither to insufficient funding nor to the corruption of government officials, but to the simple fact that, by its very nature, poverty cannot be eliminated by redistribution or any other use of force (which is all the government, as such, is capable of.) Originally published in 1969, four years after the second major wave of federal welfare legislation originated by the Johnson administration, and reedited in 1991 with a new preface and two additional chapters, the book starts with a profound truth: just as raising prices are not inflation but a symptom of it, the lack of money is not poverty but a consequence of it. Poverty Carson shows to be the failure to support oneself by one's own productive efforts, «the failure to produce what is wanted [by other producers] in sufficient quantity to rise above the level of poverty.» He then goes on to demonstrate how the various forms of government intervention in the economy send innumerable false signals to producers and would-be producers, resulting in the misallocation of resources and, therefore, impoverishment. And, this is the crux of his thesis, to those false signals, the poor are especially vulnerable. As with all of Carson's books, the arguments do not consist in pure theory, though the author, who is familiar with both classical and Austrian economics and benefited from the advice of his colleague Hans Sennholz, is far from incapable of such theorizing. No: what you will get is a very common-sensical and down-to-earth treatment of the subject, documenting the whole chain of cause and effect from socialist ideas (which Americans will always welcome with open arms so long as you manage to find a catchy name for them), to government programs, to the elderly woman who gets mugged in the street and her daughter's nervous breakdown. Denouncing the evils of government «aid» to farmers, people removal in the name of «urban renewal», union violence against non-unionized workers and business-destroying regulations, Carson makes a vibrant and humane case for the repeal of welfare legislation and other forms of interventionism, demonstrating that in the war on the poor that is being waged in the world today, the pretended philanthropists of the left are the hawks, and the allegedly heartless and reactionary classical liberals, the doves.
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