I have two friends whose families are going through hard times.
Unemployment, illness, and new babies are individually a
challenge to any family. Together they can strain a family’s
financial and psychological resources past the breaking point.
My friends take their work seriously and consistently put in
their best efforts. They do not need lessons in how to work.
They need some real help. They could use a safety net. The
economic safety net, to catch families who encounter problems
beyond their resources and then to bounce them back on their
feet, is a modern invention. European monarchies created
property systems to provide cheap labor to wealthy landowners
and political systems to protect the rich, in which the poor had
no voice. So millions moved to the New World. American democracy
was designed to promote more fairness: “All men are created
equal.” But the political democracy of the Founders was not
enough. All men and women were not born with equal chances. In
19th-century America, riches and poverty we