Out of the Poverty Trap; J. Chamberlain

It is not that Butler and Kondratas disagree with Murray's analysis of the perverse effects of Lyndon Johnson's efforts to create a Great Society in which poverty would be abolished forever. The Murray statistics are irrefutable. Aid to Families with Dependent Children had actually broken up families. What had hap pened was that the man of the house would dis appear so that his woman could qualify for gov ernment money for her children. Bill Moyers, an LBJ man, proved this for black families in a notable TV dramatization. But the Moyers' ac count went for white families as well. Butler and Kondratas' s own summary of the situation might have come directly from Murray's study. "Whether or not the system's financial incentives encourage dependency," they write, "the 'rights' view of welfare, what ever its humane intent, would probably have been enough by itself to undermine the War on Poverty. The structure of welfare eligibility and incentives has merely aggravated the problem.

Assistance is based on need, rarely linked to efforts at self-improvement. Failure is re warded, and 'deficiencies' are the key to one's well-being. When an unmarried mother shuns the support of her family and home, she is more deficient and so receives more help. If the fa ther of her child would rather live off her than provide for her, so be it, welfare checks will not stop arriving. If he marries her and gets a job reflecting whatever skills he may have, the assistance will be cut, of course. " Most conservatives would presumably say that the Welfare State "entitlements" philos ophy cannot be continued forever. Paying for it requires an economy-wrecking combination of taxation and inflation. Nevertheless Butler and Kondratas commend Lyndon Johnson for asking all the right questions. They think the American people, out of the goodness of their hearts, will insist on continuing entitlements until some way is found to make them less nec essary.

Butler and Kondratas say they have no stomach for charging machine guns. What they advocate is a strategy of building small coali tions in favor of reform while eroding the power of those who would resist it. They talk about giving the poor the resources and respon sibility for making their own choices in housing, child care, education, and other things, much as Margaret Thatcher has done in Britain.