reprinted from August 15, 2003

  In "Being poor ain't what it used to be" I described a "caste of far-from-destitute but psychologically poor people" in America, and promised to examine why and how this mostly inner-city caste has developed.

Warning: For those of you who believe that government
programs are solutions, you may as well go read
something else. You're not going to like this.

In looking back over my lifetime, I can't see anything more tragic than what has happened to much of the American black population, and I'm going to lay that tragedy right on the doorstep of liberals... modern socialistic liberals who, working from their own usual comfy position, have very nearly destroyed the very people they thought they were helping.

Let me make it clear that this isn't about race except that it has happened primarily to American blacks. I suspect, but can't prove, that if the same conditions had existed when the Irish, Italian, or other immigrations occurred, we would have a different underclass with the same characteristics. Blacks happened to be the resident poor when this disaster began.

A quick overflight of U.S. history since World War II:

After WWII, our government's propaganda machine had been running hard out for years, and switched from "support the war" to "support our returning heroes". It was indeed a mania. In retrospect, it was not only unfair to all those who remained at home working long hours and doing without, it was unfair to veterans of all other wars, before and since.

"Greatest generation" indeed... "privileged generation", in fact. Returning vets were adored, and benefits heaped upon them. Within a short time, being elected to any political office was almost impossible for anyone but a veteran. Almost 60 years later, there are, incredibly, still a handful of WWII veterans in Congress.

Veteran's benefits, especially VA-guaranteed home loans with no down payment, and veteran's educational benefits, began the great population shift from the cities to the suburbs. With the prime workforce building new houses in the suburbs, businesses began moving there as well, and giving veterans job preference. Cities became poor, neglected, and naturally crime-ridden, causing even more people to move still further away, and we saw the gradual development of yet another ring of suburbs, the development of suburban shopping malls, and an explosion of auto transportation.

WWII and veteran's benefits reconfigured our landscape from top to bottom. The 50's was characterized by our new suburban middle class and "the American dream"... home ownership, a car in every garage, and a barbeque in the back yard. By the 60's, cities were desperate, so government came to the rescue. Veterans in office had seen their lives changed by government programs, so they did more of them. Between "urban renewal programs" and new highway construction, whole communities of remaining working poor were destroyed.

Veterans, in control now, had little use for their working class "roots"... they tried their damndest to "tidy up" America, virtually eliminating what was good about working class communities. That was the beginning of the "nanny state"... eliminating eyesores and embarrassing slums. Meanwhile, the veterans were out in the suburbs, creating a newly-privileged (read spoiled) baby-boom generation with a whole new set of expectations. Suddenly, being poor as I described it in "Being poor ain't what it used to be"  was no longer fun... it wasn't even tolerable.

Those left in the cities were the poorest of the poor, and getting poorer. Factories had moved, and working-class jobs became scarce. Lots of inexpensive housing was bulldozed, and "standards" of construction were raised, eliminating future construction of low-cost housing through wonderful government measures such as building codes. We couldn't expect people to live in unsafe or unsanitary conditions, could we? The question never asked was, and still isn't... "what happens to those people who can't afford improved, more expensive lifestyles?" Blank out. That was when homelessness became a new problem.

Why wouldn't the baby-boomers believe in government programs? It created the good life for them, and they naturally wanted to "spread the wealth".

Tomorrow - Welfare, adding psychological insult to injury