Huffpo Headline: Paul Ryan's Poverty Plan Straight Out Of 19th Century
For the past year, Woodson has also served as an adviser to Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), bringing him to places like the House of Help as the congressman attempts to position himself as the Republican Party's foremost authority on the issue of poverty.
SNIP
Despite their calls for a new approach to poverty, however, Ryan and Woodson's ideas are extremely old-fashioned. Indeed, they echo conservative views about welfare going all the way back to the English Poor Laws of the 17th century, which categorized poor people according to their deservingness of help. These ideas have gained popularity at different times since then in response to different crises, like when "tramps" terrorized American towns in the 1870s, when "welfare queens" birthed crack babies in the 1990s, and when the so-called "food stamp surfer" delighted the Fox News crowd by refusing to get a job in 2013.
Whoever the bogeyman, the conservative response springs from the same core belief that too much government assistance causes the problem it's supposed to solve, and that any decent person can make it in America if he or she tries hard enough.
It's an ideology that predates economic statistics, which don't support it very well. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly 10 million Americans were unemployed in April, and 7 million more wanted full-time work, yet there were only 4 million job openings.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/14/paul-ryan-poverty_n_5295555.html
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