ABSTRACT
The popular myth of the time leads us to believe that income maintenance, a large component of the welfare state, is a function of misplaced sentiment for the welfare of the poor. And, although well meaning, it is misplaced because it worsens a problem that lies in the flawed characters of the victims. In one sense all societies are systems of income maintenance, tribal societies with a paleolithic industrial art no less so than contemporary mass societies with machine, or perhaps computer, industrial art. Government leaders of the times did come to the stabilizing effect on the economy of income maintenance programs. During the Eisenhower administration the allegedly stabilizing character of our limited welfare state was acknowledged in the term “built-in stabilizers.” The whole matter of income maintenance and welfare is obscured by the money illusion.
