William Julius Wilson Quotes
If you're talking about the narrow issue of public assistance, I would like to see us move to a more healthy system. But until we come up with certain guarantees - for example, guaranteed jobs where mothers move off welfare - I support welfare very strongly. The worst thing we could do is impose time limits and then expect people to sink or swim once they move off welfare.
Rothschild, Matthew. "William Julius Wilson." The Progressive, vol. 60, no. 12, Dec. 1996, pp. 24-28.
The Pool Laws provided economic and food relief for the very poor—an early type of welfare. Malthus and other conservatives hated the Poor Laws, but many like Malthus felt it immoral to terminate what was then the only social safety net. And none of the critics could suggest anything better and especially anything that would eliminate poverty altogether. The same issues were to be fought out in America during the Hoover Administration when the Great Depression struck. Hoover’s refusal for government to be the social safety net together with his inability to improve the economy, led to his ousting and the establishment of the New Deal with FDR.
What makes this a noteworthy political quotation is that when he made the statement, his party had lurched to the radical right and almost no one else in the Republican party would publicly say that the Federal Government had any legitimate role that involved social services, food distribution, welfare or health care. Also the Republican Presidential candidate the day before had been discovered writing off the poorest 43 percent of the country. Heller however, was up for reelection in a state what was hit much harder than most in the Great Recession and without Federal Assistance many state residents would be in terrible circumstances and Heller would not fare well in the election if he took the then required Republican ideology. Also, Heller came from a blue collar family and had a much different outlook than most Republicans of that particular time.
William Julius Wilson is an American sociologist. He is a professor at Harvard University and author of works on urban sociology, race and class issues. Laureate of the National Medal of Science, he served as the 80th President of the American Sociological Association, was a member of numerous national boards and commissions. He identified the importance of neighborhood effects and demonstrated how limited employment opportunities and weakened institutional resources exacerbated poverty within American inner-city neighborhoods.
