Welfare backlash married neoconservative moral fears to neoliberal inflation anxieties

Evidence

This particular challenge to the Fordist family wage system was profoundly unsettling to people from right across the political spectrum, and it is fair to say that it crystallized the enormous welfare backlash of the 1970s. It is in this period that you begin to hear the argument—echoed by both neoliberals such as Gary Becker and neoconservatives such as Daniel Bell and Daniel Patrick Moynihan—that public spending on welfare was making women too independent of presumptive husbands and fathers and thus effectively subsidizing the breakdown of the family. Neoliberals and neoconservatives were united in their opposition to the expansion of the welfare state under the sign of “sexual freedom,” although their motivations were very different. Neoconservatives feared that the subsidization of non-normative lifestyle choices by the welfare state would undermine the moral foundations of social order. Neoliberals were primarily motivated by economic concerns: if growing numbers of women were now claiming both equal wages and an independent social wage, the resulting expansion of claims on the state threatened to exacerbate the problem of inflation. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 228

Categorization

• XREF: Fractures the ‘neoliberals and neoconservatives are the same’ caricature — tracks the reader’s map-building goal; connects to cultural-vs-economic motive distinctions seen elsewhere. — connects to: Neoliberals opposed welfare for inflation fear, not moral reasons — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 228; Neoconservatism and neoliberalism unite mainly through shared hatred of the welfare state; Neoliberal economism paradoxically enables neoconservative moral politics. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 17 (+6 more)
• SEED: Article angle: the 1970s welfare backlash as a case where two intellectual camps converged on one policy goal for opposite reasons.

Broader Connections

• Neoliberals opposed welfare for inflation fear, not moral reasons #qualifies (0.85) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 228
• Neoliberal economism paradoxically enables neoconservative moral politics. #corroborates (0.80) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 17
• Neoliberals attacked welfare as a threat to family, race, and dignity #exemplifies (0.80) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 178
• The neoconservative-neoliberal alliance united against the welfare state rather than against the state itself #corroborates (0.80) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 127
• Neoliberalism paired deregulation with social conservatism to shift welfare onto families #corroborates (0.80) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 37
• Neoliberal welfare attacks racialized dependency and framed the family as women’s natural sphere #corroborates (0.80) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 175
• Neoconservatism and neoliberalism unite mainly through shared hatred of the welfare state #corroborates (0.75)
• Neoliberal culture recasts welfare-state dependence as a moral failure to embrace risk #qualifies (0.75) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 338
• National anti-welfare conservatism channeled prior racial resentment #corroborates (0.72) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 587