Word: banfield
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Criticizing Johnson's proposal to give rent subsidies to "moderate" income families, Edward C. Banfield, Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Urban Government, said "people who are competent to make choices should not be told how to spend their money." He added that an inadequate income does not necessarily indicate an inability to spend more money wisely...
...Banfield emphasized, however, that he is "all for income transfers to the poor." Although he agrees that specifying how "incompetents" should use their money is a problem, he stressed the fact that for people who are competent, monetary decisions should not be transferred from the individual to the state...
...Banfield has no sympathy for Johnson's plan for a system of rent subsidies to help the building industry. "The building industry can damn well help itself," he said...
With this statement of the "key problem" in hand, Banfield attacks government programs from all sides: if they are not trivial, they are ineffective; if by chance they do what they are intended to, they either ignore the central problem of poverty, aggravate it, or, at best, cancel each other out. In any case, (the final stab) effective action against poverty is politically out of the question...
...contrast to Bell's imperative for regional planning, Banfield's only hope is that extra-political forces--the rising national income, and the growing stock of handme-down housing--will stop the spreading pathological culture. Banfield's conclusion has its own fatalistic ring: Whatever happens "there will always be a "bottom fifth...