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Charles Murray

Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980 Paperback – Unabridged, March 10, 2015

by Charles Murray (Author)

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This classic book serves as a starting point for any serious discussion of welfare reform. Losing Ground argues that the ambitious social programs of the1960s and 1970s actually made matters worse for its supposed beneficiaries, the poor and minorities. Charles Murray startled readers by recommending that we abolish welfare reform, but his position launched a debate culminating in President Clinton's proposal “to end welfare as we know it.”

Print length

352 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Basic Books
Publication date

March 10, 2015
Dimensions

6.13 x 1 x 9.13 inches
ISBN-10

0465065880
ISBN-13

978-0465065882
Lexile measure

1300L
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Myron Magnet
“There's no better proof of the adage that ideas have consequences than Charles Murray's Losing Ground: in its argument, and in the fact that it changed the world.”

Newt Gingrich
“One of the pivotal books around which American history turned.”

David Frum
“One of the outstanding works of the pioneering era of conservative thought.”

About the Author

Charles Murray is the W. H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He came to national attention first in 1984 with Losing Ground and again more recently with Coming Apart. He lives with his wife in Burkittsville, Maryland.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Basic Books; Unabridged edition (March 10, 2015)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0465065880
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0465065882
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1300L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.13 x 1 x 9.13 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #657,975 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #367 in Poverty
- #735 in Social Services & Welfare (Books)
- #2,522 in History & Theory of Politics

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4.7 210 ratings

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Charles Murray

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Charles Murray is a political scientist, author, and libertarian. He first came to national attention in 1984 with the publication of "Losing Ground," which has been credited as the intellectual foundation for the Welfare Reform Act of 1996. His 1994 New York Times bestseller, "The Bell Curve" (Free Press, 1994), coauthored with the late Richard J. Herrnstein, sparked heated controversy for its analysis of the role of IQ in shaping America's class structure. Murray's other books include "What It Means to Be a Libertarian" (1997), "Human Accomplishment" (2003), "In Our Hands" (2006), and "Real Education" (2008). His 2012 book, "Coming Apart" (Crown Forum, 2012), describes an unprecedented divergence in American classes over the last half century. His most recent book is "By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission" (Crown Forum, 2015).

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4.7 out of 5

210 global ratings

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Eric Gartman

A Modern Classic in Social Policy

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 2, 2001

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Charles Murray's "Losing Ground" is not only an authoritative account of the American welfare system from 1950-80 but also a major work of social science, which explains why welfare systems in general cannot work as planned. The first section is a history of the period in the 1960's in which the welfare state came into being. The elites wanted to help the poor and the programs they set up were well intended and well funded. These included AFDC, Food Stamps, subsidized housing, jobs programs, and unemployment insurance. The result of these policies are discussed in the second section, which includes data on poverty rates, crime, education, income, employment, and marriage rates. The trend for nearly all of these indices are the same: A steady rate from 1950-65, and then an explosion in these indices beginning in the mid-60's and continuing to rise before finally leveling off around 1980. Part Three, "Interpreting the Data," explains why all this occurred. Put simply, the various welfare programs made all the problems they were trying to fix worse. Welfare discourages people from working, by making unemployment acceptable financially and socially. Furthermore, AFDC paid more money to unwed mothers, encouraging more children to be born out of wedlock. At the same time, crime increased and education worsened, compounding the problems. The fourth and final section "Rethinking Social Policy," makes this book not only relevant to the current era, but to any era. Murray creates general rules about social programs than go across time and space. The most important of these is what Murray calls "The Law of Unintended Rewards," in which the undesired behavior is made more desirable by giving social transfers that reward that behavior. By giving money to the unemployed, we make unemployment attractive, more so than working, since you are paid to do nothing. By giving money to unwed mothers, you reward being unmarried. Welfare is thus a trap that society unwittingly creates for the very people it is trying to help. Furthermore, Murray states that the more engrained the behavior is, the more likely is it that trying to change it will do harm. To change it programs can only apply carrots and not sticks. This will make that behavior hard to change, and will in the end encourage people who are not in that condition to do so in order to gain the carrots. By creating massive jobs programs for the unemployed loaded with rewards to stay in the program, you will encourage others to quit their jobs. Finally, Murray puts his theory to practice, and deals with policy. His suggestion for improving the life of the poor, decreasing crime, increasing employment, and a host of other problems is the same: To eliminate all the welfare programs which he says hold back and trap poor people. By doing this we will force them to work, marry, and learn. Government cannot create any program to help the poor through social transfers. Indeed doing so only hurts them. Many will, and have, find this answer unsettling. But social policy should be based on scientific data and findings, not emotion. When our emotions are separated and the scientific facts remain, there is no doubting the fact that the best way to help the poor is to make them stand on their own. There is, however, one critique of Murray that I have found valid. By focusing on eliminating welfare, we can expect the poor to achieve the levels they were at before the mid-1960's. This would certainly be a great improvement over the current situation, but the situation prior to the welfare reforms was not particularly good, or else no reforms would have been needed. Murray thus does not answer how to make the lives of the poor better than before welfare. Indeed, he suggests there is no way to do so. Perhaps he is right, but at least he could address this issue and tell is if the poor will always be numerous or if we can do anything to help them. By focusing on welfare, Murray has done a great service in explaining that systems failure, but he doesnt really have anything to offer in its place.

51 people found this helpful

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Dawnita Mann

Harsh reality

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 12, 2023

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This book explores the pros and cons of the federal social policies. It is thought provoking and worth considering the psychological outcomes of giving a flat hand out.

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WorkingStiff

Should be required reading for every registered voter, students

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 22, 2012

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Average productive American Citizens who work, play, worship, study, rent, own, manage, invest, and raise families have noticed the symptoms and effects of secular government "aid" gone awry. We see and interact with the "fruit" of this tree, and we have the local examples to illustrate the problems. Murray simply organizes the history, the timelines, the stats, and the conclusions of what we have observed for two generations now. We were actually making progress in reducing poverty in America before the new Socialists got elected, then appointed their bureaucrats and ultra-lenient judges to wreak havoc on the private sector's handling of charity. Now is a good time to ask why are we doing this, year after year, and expecting anything but multiplication of bad results? People respond to stumuli. Our "stimulus" package should be minimum expectations of responsibility for each man and woman for his or her own food and shelter, working at whatever they can, as many hours per day as required to "make ends meet". That's what I did, and what I do. And I am that Average productive American Citizen. We'll support adequate PRIVATE charity for the truly needy, and we will make local observations and determinations on who gets our help, not surrendering that power and responsibility to some bureaucrat with forcible access to our personal property and attempts at building our own "American dreams". Share the dream? Sure! And we should make all Americans take their own share of the responsibility. Murray is right on, and all Americans should be empowered and emboldened by his observations to demand action from our public servants to right these wrongs.

10 people found this helpful

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Vain Saints

NEARLY 60 PAGES OF DATA

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 29, 2008

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Many of the haters call this book "poorly researched" and "pseudo-scholarship" and a "hateful rant". Murray, of course, is actually one of the most measured and reasonable people one will encounter in public life, and his book is loaded with an appendix full of tables, charts, notes, and figures, taken from legitimate sources like the Census Bureau, the famous Negative Income Tax experiments, and the Coleman Report. The people who are claiming that his scholarship is flawed and the data is fixed are simply lying. Either that, or they feel the only source of "real" data to be Mother Jones magazine or perhaps even the People's Weekly World.

An astute observer will note that the reviews are concentrated at the extremes, perhaps in what Murray would call, a "U" curve. This is often the case when partisanship fuels the debate. It becomes a battle of numbers between supporters and haters. The good thing is that I don't have to take such things into consideration when reviewing this book. It is an excellent, well-argued, lucidly written, exhaustively and meticulously researched account of the American Welfare project and the "War On Poverty". Murray is measured and reasonable; however, he is no moderate. Take that for what it's worth. While his is fair-minded and not dogmatic, his opinions are not in the general stream of contemporary American politics. Of course, if you want mainstream opinion, listen to whatever talk-radio host you agree with 99% of the time. If you think "mainstream opinion" is a lot of inane, predigested codswallop and would prefer a factual and thorough account of things that cuts through the gibberish and the BS, read Charles Murray.

20 people found this helpful

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Neil Osborne

Still Losing Ground

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 10, 2017

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This classic critique of the welfare state reviews the impact of welfare programmes in the USA over the period 1950 to 1980. It was written in 1984 and influenced policymakers in the USA and UK in the 1980s.

Money and status are the most influential rewards that society uses to manage behaviour. The book explains in detail the point that the welfare state reduces the economic penalty of not working by providing an income to non-workers. It also goes on to look at the often overlooked point that the welfare state has eroded the status benefits to working as well. There used to be moral approbation associated with self-reliance and to be a recipient of welfare was degrading. As the number of people on welfare has risen the stigma attached to welfare and the status benefit of working have both decreased. We have similarly lost the useful distinction between the deserving poor and the undeserving poor.

Although the book was written in 1984 it remains relevant today. The number of people claiming welfare benefits continues to grow despite economic growth, so we are still losing ground.

The book does not cover workfare. For a discussion of workfare from the 1980s see Beyond Entitlement by Laurence M. Mead.

One person found this helpful

Ms. H. C. Swindells

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 29, 2015

Verified Purchase

A brilliant analysis of why the traditional nuclear family has been damaged in America.

Elias Samaha

Excellent Book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 30, 2013

Verified Purchase

A required reading for all those libtard do-gooders who are racking up government debt for future generations while achieving none of their stated objectives. Murray conclusively proves that the biggest victims of welfare statism are the very people that it is intended to help.

3 people found this helpful

Ethem S.

Die Tücken des Sozialstaats: Intention vs Realität

Reviewed in Germany 🇩🇪 on August 28, 2021

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Ein geniales Buch, das aufzeigt, wie der Sozialstaat denjenigen am meisten schadet, denen er vorgibt zu helfen.

Im ersten Kapitel beschreibt Murray, wie sich die gesellschaftliche Einstellung in den USA im 20. JH verändert hat. Bis in die 50er galt das System als selbstkorrigierend und Arme wurden als keine eigene Gruppe angesehen, weil jeder arm war. Das entwickelte sich zu „hand, not a handout“ und das wiederum zu bedingungsloser Generosität. Abhängig zu sein war kein Stigma mehr, sondern jedermanns gutes Recht.
Anfangs war Veraagen jedermanns eigener Fehler, nach der Great Society Reform der Johnson Regierung war das System schuld.

Im zweiten Kapitel beschreibt er die katastrophalen Folgen, die dieser Gesinnungswechsel und Transferzahlungen hatten. Arbeitslosigkeit, laborforce participation, Unehelichkeit, Teenager-Geburten, Kriminalität, Bildung und Familienzusammenhalt. Allesamt Statistiken, die seit Jahrzehnten Jahr für Jahr besser wurden. Sofort bei Einführung stoppten diese positiven Entwicklungen und verschlechterten sich wieder. Manchmal für die Weißen, selten für Reichen, aber IMMER für die schwarzen Armen. Heute weiß man, was Murray 1980 nicht wissen konnte: der Sozialstaat hat die schwarze Familie komplett zerstört. 70% der Kinder werden in Familien ohne Mann geboren, mit desaströsen Folgen.

Ab dann zeigt Murray in verschiedenen, sehr gelungenen Gedankenexperimenten, wieso staatliche Transfers gar nicht funktionieren können. Besonders das Beispiel mit einem Versuch, Zigarettenkonsum zu reduzieren, ist beeindruckend und erinnert mich an Hayeks Erkenntnis, dass der Mensch viel weniger lenken kann als er sich anmaßt.

Insgesamt ein grandioses Buch, das man gut an einem Wochenende lesen kann. Murray schreibt verständlich. Er verwendet tolle Grafiken und originelle Argumente. Ich habe viel gelernt und erkenne vieles von dem, worüber auch Sowell schreibt, in Murray’s Buch wieder. Mit Sowells Brillianz kann sich niemand messen, aber Murray bietet sehr spannende Einblicke in eine Idee, die toll klingt, aber sich in Realität als fatal entpuppt hat.

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HG

Sehr fundierte grundsätzliche Kritik am Sozialstaat

Reviewed in Germany 🇩🇪 on March 15, 2013

Verified Purchase

Besonders der empirischen Teil ist sehr hilfreich. Die Schlussfolgerungen über die Fehlentwicklungen des Sozialstaates sind eins zu eins auf die heutige Zeit und auch auf die Bundesrepublik übertragbar.

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