State Employment Policy in Hard Times

Two hundred years ago, Samuel Johnson observed that a society's level of civilization could be gauged by the manner in which it treated its poor. By that measure, the United States today is steadily losing ground. Whereas the number of officially defined poor dwindled steadily from the enactment of the Great Society programs in the mid-1960s, reaching a low of 24.5 million people in 1978, it has since risen to more than 32 million people. Although the economy continues to generate large num...