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Noam Chomsky on Welfare & Poverty
Political Activist
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"Precariat": precarious existence at periphery of society
Parts of the narrative shift has been to admit that millions of ordinary Americans suffer with poverty while the "free market" system adds to their misery by offering "financial products" that squeeze them even harder than everyone else. "The trick,"
writes Barbara Ehrenreich, "is to rob them in ways that are systematic, impersonal, and almost impossible to trace to individual perpetrators."
The combination of corporate predation and state neglect amount to forms of social coercion and structural violence waged against what Chomsky calls the "precariat"--those who live a precarious existence at the periphery
of society: the elderly, the poor, and communities of color. "It's not the periphery anymore," writes Chomsky, "it's becoming a very substantial part of society."
Source: Occupied Media, by Noam Chomsky, p. 10-11
, May 1, 2012
GOP proposals take chain saw to safety net
In 2012, the New York Times [had] a column discussing multimillionaire Mitt Romney's statement that he was "not concerned about the very poor" because there is a "safety net" for them.
The writer responds to Romney's assurance with these words: "Where to begin? First, a report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities last month pointed out that Romney's budget proposals would take a chainsaw to that safety net."
How did we in the US get to this point? "It's not the Third World misery," says Chomsky, "but it's not what it ought to be in a rich society, the richest in the world, in fact,
with plenty of wealth around, which people can see, just not in their pockets." And Chomsky credits the work of movement organizers for having helped bring these issues to the fore and having initiated a shift.
Source: Occupied Media, by Noam Chomsky, p. 12
, May 1, 2012
The vile maxim: all for ourselves and nothing for others
BROWN: In many of your books, you have referred to the "vile maxim" of Adam Smith, "All for ourselves and nothing for other people." What did he have in mind? What's the context for that comment?CHOMSKY: He had in mind the basic principle of the
rising capitalist classes, which is what the working people of New England paraphrased a century later without having read Adam Smith, "Gain wealth, forgetting all but self."
This idea of all for ourselves and nothing for anyone else was, Smith argued, the "vile maxim of the masters of mankind." He pointed out that this impulse, sometimes, incidentally, happens to help people, but he certainly wasn't impressed.
In fact, the historical Adam Smith, who was also rooted in the Enlightenment and anti-capitalist in many respects, is rather different from the image of him that's been constructed.
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p.216
, Feb 12, 1996
They stoke racial hatred to cut public services
BROWN: Do you think there is a racial element involved in the question of who gets the benefits of government welfare programs?CHOMSKY: There certainly is a racial element. It's part of the really vicious propaganda that has been developed in order
to sell the corporate welfare programs that transfer funds to the rich. One way in which this has been done--this goes right back to Reagan's crazy anecdotes about black welfare mothers driving Cadillacs and breeding like rabbits--is by engendering
race hatred.
Public policy for about 20 years now has been directed to establishing a sharp divide between a small sector of the very rich, and the majority of the population while cutting out public services. You've got to get them to accept
the cuts somehow. What you do is get people frightened, get them to hate each other, in order to turn their attention away from the real power and towards fearing and battling each other. The welfare mother, by implication black, has been used for that p
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p.224-5
, Feb 12, 1996
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