Slog Comments

i miss mid century modern texts predicting shorter and shorter work weeks by the millennium. people would just need to work 10-20 hours a week in order to produce everything we need...

Plenty of poor people seem to be able to move from Mexico to USA... This is the welfare state at work creating a massive class of the poor but comfortable enough. (Remember when poverty equated to malnutrition instead of obesity?). Before FDR, when you were poor was exactly when you took a risk and moved. Potato famine in Ireland and the US is tit deep in micks. It wasn't "easy", but lots of people did it all the time. Practically everyone who "opened up" the West did so with little more than a mule and what the could carry on their back. One of my ancestors came west on foot at 13 years old with nothing but the clothes on his back because he was poor and orphaned. He nearly starved (literaly) on the way, but lived long and died rich. The emerging welfare state encourages the poor to be bone idle. It's a terrible disservice.

@2 "The emerging welfare state encourages the poor to be bone idle" That's a myth. A tiny and effectively insignificant number of people are true welfare leaches. Most people do not want to be living at the poverty line and will take all opportunity do better themselves.

Larger income inequality, the disenfranchisement of the middle class, and the rise of the working poor is what is discouraging.