``...The interesting question is 'what are they going to do this time around?' Before, poverty programs were consonant with post-war state-social-interventionist ideology. But now, they would have to own up to the fact that the `free market' cannot solve all the problems. What will they do? '' Joanna
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I don't know if the David L. Harvey cited in the review is the same as the David Harvey of `The Condition of Postmodernity'. If it is, then I am disappointed.
Part of what makes me so cynical and suspicious of anything coming out of government or think tanks, especially the so-called liberal ones, is the complete denial that there is anything wrong with free market ideals or that these have produced absolutely wretched results. And worse in a sense, corrupted the basic understanding of democratic liberalism. At one time, the term liberal was intended to indicate the rather conservative wing of many different and more progressive social justice movements.
Free market ideology was not part of traditional US liberalism from say the turn of the 20th century up to the 80s. That ideological twist or linkage was fabricated during the collapse of the Democratic party in the late 70s early 80s. It was fabricated in an effort to re-build a monied or corporate constituency to compete with the Reagan administration. If I were to personify the difference between the old liberalism and the new liberalism, I would list Justin and Nathan on the old list, and say Brad on the new side of the list.
So if I imagine a new wave of poverty programs they would most likely be indirect benefits, supports, and extension to some aspect of a free market system: loans, grants, credits, vouchers, or some other exchange based chit---that is a meaningless substitute for money and no fundamental reform. These are only meaningless to the people baring the chit. To the institutions these chits are delivered to, well they are money in the bank.
Sure we could not only feed, cloth and house every poor person in the US, but also put them and everybody else through as much post-secondary public education as they could stand for free. We could do all that, but it would be wrong. God, some bogus capitalist pig somewhere might actually experience a slight fall in their profit margin---perish the thought.
It would be interesting to figure out how much money passed through Enron and the privatized energy market---doing absolutely nothing to improve living conditions or infrastructure for any but a few---and compare that to how much it would have cost to provide free public post-secondary education to the entire 90s generation of kids.
So, the larger goals of education, training, and so forth are all utterly corrupted into vocational training, as if a shit job is the end all be all of life. In fact I tried to argue once, that much of the technical training done in city or community colleges was actually engineering ignorance.
In any event, such programs have become something like a smiling police-state extension of the corporate panopticon devoted to disciplining and punishing the marginally employed, that is the work-slacking working class. The new wave might call these productivity enhancements. Of course these programs, as noted above, are usually nothing but a front for pumping money into the privatized or quasi-privatized public edu-tainment of so called institutions of higher education industry.
Don't get me started, Joanna.
Chuck Grimes