Comments on: Remittances Linked to Corruption http://philanthropy.foreignpolicyblogs.com/2008/02/16/remittances-linked-to-corruption/ A Great Decisions 2008 Blog Sat, 22 Nov 2008 18:42:50 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=wordpress-mu-1.0 by: Jeff Trexler http://philanthropy.foreignpolicyblogs.com/2008/02/16/remittances-linked-to-corruption/#comment-157 Sun, 17 Feb 2008 14:51:38 +0000 http://philanthropy.foreignpolicyblogs.com/2008/02/16/remittances-linked-to-corruption/#comment-157 The report actually doesn't strike me as all that surprising. Extend by analogy the lessons learned about apparent windfalls in other social contexts. Daniel Moynihan on the degradation of the family & urban life associated with unearned welfare payments; the substitution effect of lotteries; the misallocation of cigarette company settle money by state legislatures. In each case the external subsidy serves not just to meet the recipients' financial need, but to amplify systemic dysfunction. Thirty years ago this sort of observation was fightin' words; now the rising generation takes it as a given. The result is an environment that can seem wryly amusing to someone who remembers the bitter fights of the Reagan years quite well. Today's social entrepreneurs tend to self-identify as liberal progressives, yet back in the day a market-based solution to poverty would have been condemned as heretical conservativism. The report actually doesn’t strike me as all that surprising. Extend by analogy the lessons learned about apparent windfalls in other social contexts. Daniel Moynihan on the degradation of the family & urban life associated with unearned welfare payments; the substitution effect of lotteries; the misallocation of cigarette company settle money by state legislatures. In each case the external subsidy serves not just to meet the recipients’ financial need, but to amplify systemic dysfunction.

Thirty years ago this sort of observation was fightin’ words; now the rising generation takes it as a given. The result is an environment that can seem wryly amusing to someone who remembers the bitter fights of the Reagan years quite well. Today’s social entrepreneurs tend to self-identify as liberal progressives, yet back in the day a market-based solution to poverty would have been condemned as heretical conservativism.

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