I'm putting this excellent article by the Guardian's Gary Younge in "poverty", not US, because while the phenomenon is more acute in the US with their lack of healthcare and de-unionized labour force, it affects workers and unemployed people here and elsewhere as well.
It also has a Hall of Infamy Evil Capitalist spokesbot quote:
During a discussion at the University of Michigan in 2010, the billionaire vice-chairman of
Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway firm, Charles Munger, was asked whether the government should have bailed out homeowners rather than banks.
"You've got it exactly wrong," he said. "There's danger in just shovelling out money to people who say, 'My life is a little harder than it used to be.' At a certain place you've got to say to the people, 'Suck it in and cope, buddy. Suck it in and cope.'"
But banks, he insisted, need our help. It turns out that moral hazard – the notion that those who know the costs of their failure will be borne by others will become increasingly reckless – only really applies to the working poor.
"You should thank God" for bank bailouts, Munger told his audience. "Now, if you talk about bailouts for everybody else, there comes a place where if you just start bailing out all the individuals instead of telling them to adapt, the culture dies."
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/04/us-republicans-make-poor-pay-budgetAs many comments point out, the Democrats in the US - and the Labour Party in the UK, have essentially similar policies...
Topic: US Republicans make the poor pay (Gary Younge) (Read 3526 times)