The negative tax treats poverty’s symptoms while abandoning inquiry into its causes.

Evidence

First of all, what is it that will be attenuated by the action which is explicitly sought after in the idea of a negative tax? It is the effects of poverty, and only its effects. That 1s to say, in no way does the negative tax seek to be an action aiming to modify this 0]:’ J:ht.C;:1!~~QfFQVrty;The negative t will never functiQu at the level of the causes of povertynbut simply at the level ofits.effects. This is what Stoleru says when he writes: .”For some, social assistance must be motivated by the causes of poverty/’ and thus what it covers, what it is directed towards, is illnes§,accidents, unfitness for work, or the impossibility of finding employment. That is to say, in this traditional perspective, you cannot give someone assistance without asking why he needs it and so without seelcing to change the reasons for which he needs it. “For others,” those who support the negative tax, “social assistance must only be motivated by the iffects of poverty; every human being,” StoIeru says, “has basic needs, and society must help him to meet them when he cannot do so by himself.” So that when it comes to it, the famous distinction that Western governmentality has tried for so long to establish between the good and bad poor, between the voluntary and * In inverted commas in the manuscript (p. — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 1069

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Friedman’s negative income tax aimed to gut welfare bureaucracies, not eliminate redistribution — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 232