Deserving poor included widows and orphans of war veterans, but also people rendered unable to work due to illness or disability. However, to get any kind of relief the deserving people had damn well better show gratitude and humility. The undeserving... well at best they are on their own. And once race is entered into the equation the long knives really come out. America's original sin of slavery has had long-lasting consequences of callousness and irrationality that will provide fertile ground for academic study until hell freezes over.
When the stock market crashed in 1929 and local relief was quickly overwhelmed by the resulting carnage of economic dislocation, certain influential people realized that the government would have to do something. So FDR's New Deal created a number of agencies to provide relief and try to counteract the deserving vs. undeserving dichotomy by helping all of the downtrodden regardless of situation. Somehow, finally, the public came to understand that not all poverty was the result of laziness... for a time. Not that a certain segment of the population ever truly stopped hating the poor, but they were marginalized. Again, for a time.
Recessions came and went, Keynesianism did it's best to stabilize the economy but as the gospels say "the poor shall always be with you." Slowly, the war on poverty declared by LBJ in the 1960s mutated into a war on the poor because the white middle class could not let go of the undeserving frame. Then along came Ronald Reagan and tall tales about "welfare queens" driving Cadillacs with welfare money and "big bucks" eating T-Bone steaks on the public dole became conventional wisdom instead of bitter whispers. It just did not matter that the stories Reagan told were manufactured, the seed of propaganda always plays to the prejudices of the people.
Anecdotes and exaggerated rumors replaced statistical analysis and untainted Christian charity in the direction of anger and callousness. Where I live, you will no doubt run into someone who will tell the fantastic tales of abuse by unscrupulous and undeserving poor people. Always there are bad people out there perfectly able to work but taking advantage of the system and breeding like rabbits, according to the now loudly voiced opinions. The great recession and subsequent depression Americans are still living through bears more than superficial resemblance to the Great Depression, but there has been no upwelling of caring and sympathy for our neighbors. The list is just too long to recount but social media makes the attitudes of popular opinion plain and in text format. I wanted to share one such crowd-sourced exposition I recently witnessed, just for the heck of it.
Mike: so i switched jobs, have a lapse in insurance, and wanted to get badger care, TEMPORARILY, for my kids. initially I was told that any child could be covered, regardless of income. now i'm being told that I make too much money. so the programs that I pay taxes for cannot help me temporarily?! how come there are no programs for people who play by the rules? theres a loophole for the crackhead that has seven kids and I can't get help? FUCK YOU!!!!!!!!!! [comments follow]
You actually expected anything different....I thought you were American. Welcome to the country....lol
I agree, its a jacked system!!!
How long is this shit going to last.
So right from the beginning the "deserving vs. undeserving" meme is present and is never challenged. What amazes me is how quickly frustration with our shredded safety net boils over onto the president but not onto the immediately responsible state government until much later. I know some of these people so the regression to conspiracy theories is not surprising, but the attention to conspiracy in lieu of Occam's Razor or even the mention of insurance companies is a revealing glimpse into how people think. Granted, American society is incredibly complex and unbiased information about how the system works is often hard to come by, but does it necessarily follow that the real world should automatically be discarded in favor of wild speculation?
Divide and conquer.
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