The Last Ditch by Tom Paine

THE LAST DITCH

The redemptive power of labour

Published by Tom

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What I Learned in the Poverty War by Peter Cove, City Journal Autumn 2012

The linked article is one of the most encouraging I have read for a while. It describes the experience of a former member of the "welfare industrial complex" (the author's splendid coinage) who founded a private company to profit from finding work for the dole-dependent. His work influenced Rudy Guiliani as Mayor of New York who is quoted as saying, sagely;

…all the incentives in the welfare programs run by the city, the state, and the federal government were wrong. All the incentives were to put people on welfare. People put more people on welfare, they got bigger offices, they got bigger titles, they got more money, so in essence, failure in the lives of the people and failure in society became success for the welfare worker…
Please read the whole thing. It's worth it to note how welfarists in the USA opposing his plans sound just like Polly screeching madly against IDS's reforms. Leftists everywhere despise interference with their self-satisfied schemes to exploit the poor.

One response to “The redemptive power of labour”

  1. Suboptimal Planet Avatar
    Suboptimal Planet

    Cove is evidently still a hopeless statist, who has no idea what ‘real job’ means (hint: it’s a job people will voluntarily pay for, not “programs similar to those run by the Depression-era Works Progress Administration”, based on confiscated wealth, “paying workers to build parks, refurbish bridges, clean streets, and so forth”).
    That said, having people receive something for something, rather than something for nothing, is clearly better for them and society.

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Tom is a retired international lawyer. He was a partner in a City of London law firm and spent almost twenty years abroad serving clients from all over the world.

Returning to London on retirement in 2011, he was dismayed to discover how much liberty had been lost in the UK while he was away.

He’s a classical liberal (libertarian, if you must) who, like his illustrious namesake, considers that

“…government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.”

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