Nothing New

[stickmaker]

I'm currently reading and enjoying _A Square Meal_ by Jane Ziegelman and Andrew Coe. This book is about how diets in the US changed during the Twentieth Century. I'm up to the early Thirties.

There's a lot of material about the effects of the Great Depression and various relief efforts on what and how much people ate. One of the strongest arguments against relief by politicians and businessmen was that there was work available but people just didn't want to work. That giving them food (or anything else) would just make them lazy and dependant. Many programs intended to help people had work requirements for "able bodied" men which had to be fulfilled before their families could receive any government help. 

This didn't work any better then than it did any other time it has been tried. Yet people keep trying it. 

Not only did getting work depend on work being available, but many people had "invisible" disabilities which prevented them for medical reasons from doing physical labor. Many of those making the rules didn't take this into account; if the person wasn't obviously disabled, they couldn't be disabled. They just didn't want to work. Others in authority simply didn't care, claiming that these people were able bodied no matter what doctors said. Some of those making the work requirement demands did so for political reasons, or to excuse their own inaction. Others cared more about their budget than the people they were supposed to be helping. Having someone starve because they didn't meet some arbitrary standard was handwaved away, or simply denied.

You see the same thing happening today. There's nothing new, except the increasing accumulation of history showing us what works and what doesn't.