What I Learned in the Poverty War by Peter Cove, City Journal Autumn 2012
The linked article is one of the most encouraging I have read for a while. It describes the experience of a former member of the "welfare industrial complex" (the author's splendid coinage) who founded a private company to profit from finding work for the dole-dependent. His work influenced Rudy Guiliani as Mayor of New York who is quoted as saying, sagely;
...all the incentives in the welfare programs run by the city, the state, and the federal government were wrong. All the incentives were to put people on welfare. People put more people on welfare, they got bigger offices, they got bigger titles, they got more money, so in essence, failure in the lives of the people and failure in society became success for the welfare worker...
Please read the whole thing. It's worth it to note how welfarists in the USA opposing his plans sound just like Polly screeching madly against IDS's reforms. Leftists everywhere despise interference with their self-satisfied schemes to exploit the poor.
