The New Poor and the Old

For long stretches of history, no one but the poor has been interested in poverty; but at intervals—and we are in one such period now—it has become respectable to see it as a problem. Sociologists, economists, social workers, and politicians of all persuasions have issued numberless studies of poverty, and as a result have succeeded in establishing two entirely contradictory images of the poor: on the one hand, they are the salt of the earth, hard-working individuals victimized by our e...