CathNews New Zealand

There is no better way to channel the mind-bending logic of 18th century thinkers on poverty (men who we can assume were not poor themselves, by virtue of the fact that history remembers them) than to simply quote their words. Meet Philippe Hecquet, a well-known French doctor speaking in 1740:

The poor … are like the shadows in a painting: they provide the necessary contrast.

With a little less lyricism, here is Englishman Arthur Young, in 1771:

Everyone but an idiot knows that the lower classes must be kept poor or they will never be industrious.

Philosopher and economist Bernard de Mandeville explained in 1732 that if countries can’t have slaves, the rich people who live there at least require a vast and permanent underclass to prop up the economy and their personal good times:

… it is manifest, that in a free Nation where Slaves are not allow’d of, the surest Wealth consists in a Multitude of laborious Poor; for besides that they are the never-failing Nursery of Fleets and Armies, without them there could be no Enjoyment, and no Product of any Country could be valuable.

In the span of 200 years, these commonly held sentiments have of course come to be seen as deeply wrong-headed, in total opposition with today’s notion that poverty is something we’d rather eradicate than exploit. The history of how we so dramatically changed our minds on the topic (and the related responsibilities of government) is chronicled in a fascinating new National Bureau of Economic Research working paper by Georgetown University economist Martin Ravallion. Continue reading

Sources

• The Atlantic
• Image: UMCOR

Additional reading

News category: Features.