Michael Katz, 75, Who Challenged View of Poverty, Dies

[Hissyspit]

Source: New York Times

Michael Katz, 75, Who Challenged View of Poverty, Dies

By PAUL VITELLO
SEPTEMBER 4, 2014

Michael B. Katz, an influential historian and social theorist who challenged the prevailing view in the 1980s and ’90s that poverty stemmed from the bad habits of the poor, marshaling the case that its deeper roots lay in the actions of the powerful, died on Aug. 23 in Philadelphia. He was 75.

His wife, Edda Katz, said the cause was cancer.

Professor Katz, who taught history at the University of Pennsylvania for the last 36 years and was a founder of its urban studies program, wrote more than a dozen books chronicling public welfare policies in the United States from the start of the republic through the 20th century.

The limited success of those efforts, he said, argued for adoption of a universal minimum-standard-of-living policy, sometimes known as the guaranteed minimum income. (Its supporters, on both sides of the political spectrum, included President Richard M. Nixon.)

Michael B. Katz marshaled the case that poverty's deeper roots lay in the actions of the powerful.
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
Professor Katz’s best-known books, “In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America” (1986) and “The Undeserving Poor: From the War on Poverty to the War on Welfare” (1990), examined American policy as it evolved from the poorhouses of the 18th century to the humanitarian reforms of the Progressive era; from the heavy-handed 1920s prescriptions for curing “behavioral dysfunction” in the poor (inspired by Freud) to the broad-based social safety-net measures of the New Deal.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/05/us/michael-b-katz-historian-who-challenged-views-on-poverty-dies-at-75.html

[merrily]

1. RIP, but whose prevailing view was it in the '80s and '90s that poverty was

result of bad habits of the poor? The Roosevelts? The Kennedys? The Johnsons? The Carters?

http://billmoyers.com/content/what-inspired-robert-f-kennedys-fight-against-hunger/

On the left, anyway, that view had gone out with the hoop skirt, well before the departed Mr. Katz challenged it, as correct as he was to challenge those who still had that view as late as the 80s and 90s. Though, by then, I suspect it was more willful ignorance.

Sometimes I don't know if I am reading the New York Times or the Washington Times anymore, ffs.

Again, not taking anything away from Katz. RIP.

[BumRushDaShow]

2. "but whose prevailing view was it in the '80s and '90s that poverty..."

"...result of bad habits of the poor? The Roosevelts? The Kennedys? The Johnsons? The Carters?"

What ilk was elected President in 1980 and instituted unprecedented people-destroying policies through to the end of his VP's term in 1992 (where 30 years later, we are still trying to recover)? That is the answer - he and his idiot followers (who proceeded to buy up every media outlet available to "spread" the falsehoods).

And as a sidenote, the current Washington Times was established during the period that I mention.

[merrily]

6. (pssst. I knew the answer to my question.)

[Frank Cannon]

3. Gee, I wonder who?

[ck4829]

4. It's the easiest view to have, it requires little thought about what the poor go through

A lot of people still have this view, you don't have to do any real thinking to just say the poor are lazy, and you also don't have to do any work to find people who agree with you.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1976107

[merrily]

5. A lot of people mostly on the right. That does not make it

the prevailing view of the nation, though.

We fund schools, meals in schools, provide housing and do a thousand other things that show that, as a nation, we are not simply blaming poor people, even if Lee Atwater types come up with a phrase like "welfare queens."