Understanding the left’s plan for a ‘Great Reset

American Thinker ^ | 22 Nov, 2020 | Andrea Widburg

[MtnClimber]

The term “the great reset” is suddenly en vogue. For leftists, it’s shorthand for using the systemic change flowing from the world’s response to the Wuhan virus as a springboard for remaking the world in a leftist, greenie mold. Or as Rahm Emanuel said, never let a crisis go to waste.

The left has wanted to break the system for 55 years. Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, two professors of social work at Columbia University, first articulated the idea in a paper for The Nation, entitled, “The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty.”

Cloward and Piven found it disheartening that the poor failed to optimize the welfare benefits to which they were entitled (“it is not generally known that for every person on the rolls at least one more probably meets existing criteria of eligibility but is not obtaining assistance”). They claimed this wasn’t a flaw in the welfare system; instead, it was “an integral feature.”

The two socialists declared that any challenge to the system “would precipitate a profound financial and political crisis” – and they wanted that precipitation. By “a massive drive to recruit the poor onto the welfare rolls,” they intended to destroy the welfare system and force federal intervention. “The ultimate objective of this strategy [was] to wipe out poverty by establishing a guaranteed annual income.”

Since then, we apply the phrase “Cloward-Piven strategy” to any leftist plan that envisions breaking the system to remake the system.

[Pajamajan]

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