The New Politics of Poverty: The Non-Working Poor in America - Hardcover

Mead, Lawrence

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0465059627 ISBN 13: 9780465059621

Publisher: Basic Books, 1992

Synopsis

A controversial look at how the failure of most of the poor to work at all has transformed American politics, by a New York University political scientist who is a leading advocate of workfare programs.. Thirty years ago, the great national debate was how to help ordinary, workaday Americans achieve the good things in life. Today, we are preoccupied withand increasingly divided overhow to cope with the problems of poor and dependent Americans, most of whom cannot or will not work at the jobs available. Mead provides overwhelming and disturbing evidence that passive povertythe failure of most of the poor to work at allreflects defeatism more than lack of opportunity. In this controversial book, Mead proposes concrete steps to overcome the inertia of the nonworking poor trapped in the welfare system. If the poor return to work, he suggests, American politics would focus once again on the problems of the working Americans.

About this title

About the Author

Lawrence M. Mead is associate professor of politics at New York University. He is the author of Beyond Entitlement: The Social Obligations of Citizenship (1986), and he writes frequently for Commentary, The Public Interest, and other scholarly and general-interest publications.

Edition details

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0465059627
• ISBN 13: 9780465059621
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 384