Obama's Cloward-Piven Strategy

Jun 12, 2014
Does Obama plan to bankrupt America? On May 2, 1966, two Columbia University sociologists, Professor of Social Work Richard A. Cloward and his then-research associate Frances Fox Piven, wrote a pivotal article in The Nation, articulating "a strategy to end poverty."

The solution to ending poverty, Cloward and Piven argued, required expanding the government welfare state beyond providing Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance and food stamps. They sought to establish a "guaranteed annual income" of at least $100,000 a year as a constitutional right.

Having concluded that a capitalist system would never apply capital fairly to fulfill the needs of workers, the two Columbia University-based sociologists concluded that a progressive strategy of voting ever-expanding social welfare programs could push the capitalist system to the breaking point.