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  1. Poverty

Charity or Philanthropy?

The Philanthropic Revolution: An Alternative History of American Charity  by jeremy beeruniversity of pennsylvania, 134 pages, $19.95 As I sat on the subway car reading Jeremy Beer’s new book The Philanthropic Revolution: An Alternative History of American Charity, a homeless man entered the . . . . Continue Reading »

Solving the Poor

In a recent article in the “New York Review of Books” on the television and stage adaptations of Hilary Mantel’s historical novels “Wolf Hall” and “Bring up the Bodies,” the Irish critic Fintan O’Toole tries to explain the present popularity of a story about Henry VIII’s obscure . . . . Continue Reading »

Bessie’s House

Five years ago, Mike Low started Bessie’s House in Kansas City’s Northeast neighborhood, where unemployment is at 16 percent and median household income is $25,000. An average resident has a one-in-twelve chance of being the victim of a violent crime. Any way you measure it, the place is stuck in poverty. But Low sees something different. Continue Reading »

The Poor Are Not Middle Class

Linda Tirado’s poverty was a horrible grind with no means of ready escape. “Why I Make Terrible Decisions, or, poverty thoughts,” her blog post that chronicled this poverty, went viral last November. By early December, Tirado had critics—many, many critics—who more or less made her out to be a poor little rich girl gone slumming, trying to pull a scam with her gofundme page (that incidentally netted her some $61,000). A news outlet described her article as one of several web hoaxes that year. Continue Reading »

Forming a New Republican Anti-Poverty Message

Arthur Brooks argues that conservatives have Faulty Moral Arithmetic . He is complaining about Republicans and conservatives, though perhaps more about the perception about Republicans and conservatives than about their essence. There have been many reports and studies over the years about the . . . . Continue Reading »

More on the Topic of Solving Poverty

Gene Fant opened this conversation up, so I’ll dive in.I think it is interesting that anyone, such as the person Dr. Fant refers to, could think that the federal government can effectively solve the problem of poverty.  I don’t think it can because it resolutely refuses to confront . . . . Continue Reading »

As Long As They Spell Our Names Right

As Long As They Spell Our Names Right We are incessantly told that we live in a celebrity culture, and it is in large part true. If a celebrity is defined as someone who is well known for being well known, then publicity is the lifeblood of a celebrity culture. Any publicity is good publicity. As it . . . . Continue Reading »

“Saving” the Poor

The poor will always be with us. Yet, pace Cain, we have an obligation to look after our brothers. As we well know, poverty today is too often accompanied by social pathologies, deep corrupting vices, and a smoldering despair that Great Society welfare services do little to alleviate, and perhaps . . . . Continue Reading »

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