This works out great because – to paraphrase a commenter on Megan's blog – being poor means that someone else makes your decisions for you. Politicians may not have been bright enough to figure that out in the beginning, but it hasn't escaped their notice now. If they can only impoverish the entire nation, their power would be immense.

The worst thing that could happen for the Democrats would be lots more Americans becoming wealthy (or just learning basic economics). Seems like a bad incentive situation to me…

Now I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but they couldn't do a much better job if it was a conspiracy!

The fact is that urban poverty has more to do with deindustrialization and capital flight to developing countries. To blame the "War on Poverty" for the problems in these communities in unfair. You may argue that they were largely ineffective, but indeed the source of these problems was not these policies. "Voluntary cooperative action" through markets is what has caused the current economic crisis and worsened the conditions of the black urban underclass.

I find that one thing that doesn't work very well in this comment section is simply asserting something. It makes your argument rather unconvincing – seeing as it's not an argument. How have these ideas been undercut by recently reality? Which specific ideas and specifically how were these ideas undercut?

"Voluntary cooperative action" through markets is what has caused the current economic crisis and worsened the conditions of the black urban underclass.

When you can explain to me how keeping an interest rate at historic lows and government mandates for tax-subsidized GSEs to lend to people who will never ever pay back the loan can be mistaken for "voluntary cooperative action", I'll entertain your assertion.

Meanwhile, the only parts of Harlem that have gotten better are the parts where residents took it upon themselves to clean out the crack houses and refurbish the neighbourhood. THAT is voluntary cooperative action at work, my friend.

add the myriad of other techniques deployed to prevent people becoming too independent of the benevolent state.

The Kiwi opposition leader has been promoting the idea that a guy with more than $1 million worth of property should be allowed the dole – details on http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz

That insipid dick might end up running my country

Only economics can do so.

Fair?

Dr. Williams has been studying the issue for for over 25 years.

He just may have a bit of insight.

"Voluntary cooperative action" through markets is what has caused the current economic crisis and worsened the conditions of the black urban underclass.

Can you make a cogent argument to back up your assertion?

I'm betting you can't, and quoting others who make similar assertions does not a cogent argument make.

What rebuttal? He merely made some assertions, not any argument at all.

By your thinking there was no poverty until the Guvmint intervened and then poverty was rife. Poor people are poor in a free market because they haven't figured out any way to satisfy any market demand.

Poor people are poor in a free market because

But we don't have a free market.

That's not it.

Once upon a time, most everyone, by today's standards, was poor. In the U.S., people who, anywhere else, would have been poor, began to realize the rewards of their labors, and so, made themselves wealthier. Some more so than others, but all became better off as technology made human effort more productive and relatively free markets allowed people to multiply the value of their efforts via the coordination made possible by market pricing.

What government interventions have done is to freeze a lot of people in place, particularly the poor, by taking wealth out of the system to grow the federal and state bureaucracies, build and extend an empire, destroy the incentives to save, reward criminal behavior, impede the entry of youth into the market, and so on.

Political systems always cater to the wealthy, that's why the wealthy created them.

1982? Not only did he know this in 1982, but he could communicate it so well then too? That's discouraging. You would hope that that kind of work would have been more accepted over that time frame.

"How is it that some of us didn't fall under the spell? How does this continue?"

I wonder those same things. It's not surprising that in a society where conventional wisdom said making people into homeowners made them responsible (rather than the responsible happened to become homeowners), that we struggle so much with critical thinking.

But why more people buy the false cause, and doubt the true cause is beyond me. Could be generational.