Losing Ground
American Social Policy, 1950–1980

An excellent data-based analysis of the massive social programs introduced starting in the mid-sixties, and their effects. Murray convincingly argues that after billions and billions spent on welfare programs, including AFDC, food stamps, unemployment insurance, job training programs, and others, th......more

Losing Ground is Murray's comprehensive study of the disastrous effect of social welfare in the United States. Essentially, any of the social experiments were performed at the expenses of taxpayers with negative outcomes, what needs to be done is to create a colour blind society focusing on the hard......more

This book is pretty amazing; written in the early 1980s and accurately predicted many trends which just got worse. Essentially, the war on poverty turned out to actually be a war on the poor themselves. Ultimately, it comes down to one question: If you were going to die and your children were going to......more

This book is perhaps the best argument for reforming American social welfare policy that you will ever read. It may seem strange to suggest that a book on analyzing the effects of the welfare state would be captivating, but this one is just that. No matter what your political or ideological leanings......more

In his ground-breaking (shaking?) work thirty years into the American welfare experiment, Murray opens with two assertions: 1) It was made profitable for the poor to behave in the short-term in ways that were destructive in the long-term. 2) These long-term losses were then covered up--subsidizing ir......more