Book Review of Regulating the Poor

The goal of this part of the paper is to discuss the main thesis of this book, and to give examples of this thesis. The main thesis of the area of this book that I read would be that the governmental power doesn’t provide relief for poverty because there is a sincere care about the individual, but because those that had power feared if there wasn’t anything done in times of high levels of poverty that there would be great political turmoil and individuals of lower classes would rise up and revolt against the government. Once the government provided aid to those individuals in poverty in these times of high dissentment, the average individual would be able to gain a job and somewhat get back on their feet. When this occurred, the government would slowly discontinue the amount of aid given to individuals. So even though individuals still may have been in poverty, the amount was less, and since the government had tried to fix the problem, the amount of political dissatisfaction had decreased.

A main example of this situation is during the Great Depression when there were large amounts of people that were unemployed. If individuals were lucky enough to have jobs, they weren’t paid very well and still suffered in the life of poverty. The government began doing work projects to provide individuals with jobs. The New Deal was an attempt to greatly affect the problems of poverty.