ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book talks about people who do not share in the prosperity of our advanced industrial state. The rediscovery of poverty came briefly as a shock to the many people who believed that it was one of the giants of the 1930s which had perished in the post-war era, when the Welfare State made us One Nation. Poverty has come to be treated as a technical problem associated with the economics of growth. The 'relatively low cost' solution which had been so glibly advocated by Abel-Smith and Townsend on the grounds that it was acceptable in that haven of social and economic justice, the United States, was not a new one for this country either. At the time when the Family Income Supplement was being introduced, it was widely commented that it represented a return to the Speenhamland System.
