Ghost of Igloi wrote:
Fed policies are inherently discriminatory to the minority communities.
I just had to jump in on this one because it cuts to the heart of the matter. Some people -- academics, politicians, social commentators on television, as Nassim Taleb would say -- tend to be great at first-order thinking, but social problems are seldom only one order deep. Well-intended steps -- for example, LBJ's War on Hunger -- mostly solved the first-order problem (hunger), but it had massive unintended consequences. Why? Because humans have evolved to become masters at gaming the system.
As a former equal opportunity officer in the military shortly after Welfare passed, I've often wondered if enlightened historians -- academics, politicians, social commentators on television -- a hundred years from now will look back on Welfare as economic slavery. Politicians' well-intended program created a culture where women with children were penalized for getting married. People were rewarded for not working... not enough reward to have the things that other people had, but enough reward to keep millions from seeking ways to improve their position by working. Millions of children grew up without a working father figure as a role model. Daniel Patrick Moynihan stood as a lone Democrat voice against the planned structure of welfare, pointing out that it would create exactly this problem.
Welfare destroyed the American Dream for entire generations of minorities.
It is so sad.