Postwar class resentment infected economic theory and now drives welfare stigma

Evidence

Injustice lay in the disorder that economics professors saw in society after World War I, where the unworthy had gained too much and had the audacity to demand more. Whether it was their classism fueling economic theory or vice versa doesn’t matter. What does is that the two aspects reinforced each other, creating a sense of repugnance toward the “lazy,” which grew into the disgust that many today display toward those who receive welfare and other state subsidies. Even many poor workers agree with these economists’ thesis. — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 227

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s understanding of how the deserving/undeserving-poor distinction operates as a political instrument; since the reader studies class discipline, this is the moral-hegemony layer of Mattei’s argument. — connects to: Modern welfare ideology replaces moral blame of the poor with suspicion — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 115; Adenauer-era economics aimed to dismantle the welfare state rather than build it — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2516; Economists blamed working-class morality for postwar inflation. — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 13 (+2 more)