摘要：In the US as in Britain, conservatives - including those in the Democratic Party - repeatedly proclaim that the welfare state engenders dependency, laziness, and immorality, a new pauperism sometimes labelled with an old name - the 'underclass.' Under the force of that conservative attack, many liberals have joined in the clamour for or acceptance of cutbacks in social spending. Those on the Left who have resisted this moralizing against the very poor have been reduced to defending the puny and humiliating welfare provision we have in the US, so that our earlier radical critiques of the welfare system now seem frivolous and utopian. Even if one leaves aside questions of the accuracy and morality of this defence, it is not at all clear that it is instrumentally effective, because the negative consequences of the US welfare system are so palpably evident that our denial is transparently ideological.
其他摘要：In the US as in Britain, conservatives - including those in the Democratic Party - repeatedly proclaim that the welfare state engenders dependency, laziness, and immorality, a new pauperism sometimes labelled with an old name - the 'underclass.' Under the force of that conservative attack, many liberals have joined in the clamour for or acceptance of cutbacks in social spending. Those on the Left who have resisted this moralizing against the very poor have been reduced to defending the puny and humiliating welfare provision we have in the US, so that our earlier radical critiques of the welfare system now seem frivolous and utopian. Even if one leaves aside questions of the accuracy and morality of this defence, it is not at all clear that it is instrumentally effective, because the negative consequences of the US welfare system are so palpably evident that our denial is transparently ideological.
