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Tyranny of Kindness

Tyranny of Kindness

Dismantling the Welfare System to End Poverty in America

by Theresa Funiciello

“Tyranny of Kindness is a mystery story that finally answers the question: why do the poor in the United States stay poor? With her journalist’s zeal for following the money and her depth of experience as a former welfare mother, Theresa Funiciello shows us who really benefits from the government industry premised on helping the poor, and tells us the personal stories behind the statistics. No one should try to assess, change, or understand the human and financial realities of government helping programs without reading Tyranny of Kindness.” –Gloria Steinem

Paperback

Imprint Atlantic Monthly Press
Page Count 368
Publication Date August 01, 1994
ISBN-13 978-0-8711-3578-0
Dimensions 6" x 9"
US List Price $14.00

About The Book

Tyranny of Kindness is an authoritative indictment of America’s welfare system by a woman who knows its failings all too well. Theresa Funiciello, a one-time welfare mother whose firsthand experience with the “endless nightmare” of the system propelled her into advocacy, exposes the root causes of our present debacle and offers a sane, viable, and cost-efficient alternative in this important and timely book.

Ms. Funiciello’s own welfare story, as well as those of many others she has come in contact with, forms the emotional, heartrending backdrop of this powerful book. Giving us a palpable sense of the hard day-to-day realities of living on welfare, she tells us of the struggle to survive on sub-poverty-level assistance and the impossible choices it forces between food, clothing, health care, and shelter. In all of these stories we hear the humiliating battle with the labyrinthine social services bureaucracy, which the author believes has subverted the entire welfare enterprise.

The problem is that the social service sector has been transmogrified into a huge, self-serving, ever-expanding business in which the poor and their plight have tragically become lost. A single fact stands out”that while the moneys set aside for social services have grown tremendously over the last decades, the poor are actually receiving less. Ms. Funiciello’s approach here turns to that of a hard-hitting investigative reporter. Taking on individuals, public agencies, and private charity organizations, she details the many ways money for poor people is diverted to fatten the bureaucracy, how so little is accomplished, how billions of dollars are wasted. It is the author’s contention that the main benefactors of the present system are the middle-class professionals who run it and the politicians shagging dollars and votes.

But Tyranny of Kindness goes beyond an analysis of the problems. Reviewing the history of assistance for the poor in this country, she revises a theory that was popular during the Nixon and Johnson adminstrations and that is now practiced in many parts of the world. Ms. Funiciello’s argument in favor of bypassing the bureaucracy to give monetary assistance directly to the poor, known as guaranteed income, is closely and passionately argued and makes eminent sense.

At a time when welfare reform is being pushed to the top of our national agenda, Tyranny of Kindness will redefine the terms in the ongoing public debate.

Tags Sociology/General

Praise

‘ms. Funiciello’s devastating portrait of the absolute irrationality and waste of our existing social-welfare system will convince many that almost anything else would be an improvement.””The Wall Street Journal

“Tyranny of Kindness is a mystery story that finally answers the question: why do the poor in the United States stay poor? With her journalist’s zeal for following the money and her depth of experience as a former welfare mother, Theresa Funiciello shows us who really benefits from the government industry premised on helping the poor, and tells us the personal stories behind the statistics. No one should try to assess, change, or understand the human and financial realities of government helping programs without reading Tyranny of Kindness.””Gloria Steinem

“The account of a woman from inside America’s brutal, ineffective, welfare system. . . . Funiciello writers clearly, with engaging stories and sardonic humor.””Booklist

“An impassioned, intelligent appraisal of a decent idea gone b

ad.””Los Angeles Times

“This is the kind of thinking that will be utterly foreign to the policy makers in Washington”clear, founded in experience, well-reasoned”and it could actually make a difference. Everyone who cares about poverty in this country”hell, anyone who cares about this country’should read this important book.””James Hightower

“Theresa Funiciello lays to rest many of the myths surrounding the American welfare system: that advocates and professionals servicing the poor know better than the poor themselves what’s best; that there are plenty of jobs if only the poor will work and submit themselves to training programs; and that welfare payments are enough to keep body and soul together. Most importantly, Funiciello shows the degree to which liberal bureaucrats are part of the problem, not the solution. Tyranny of Kindness is a true, passionate and courageous book.”‘stanley Aronowitz, author of Roll Over Beethoven: The Return of Cultural Strife

“Theresa Funiciello has given us a powerful analysis of how the U.S. Welfare State has come to favor middle-class professionals at the expense of the needy. As plans for a ‘suburban New Deal” emanate from the Clinton administration, her book reminds us of the hypocrisy of a society that stigmatizes welfare families while lavishing huge consumption subsidies on the affluent.””Phillip Longman, author of Born to Pay: The New Politics of Aging in America

“Theresa Funiciello’s indictment of welfare is hard-hitting, well-reasoned, and from the heart. She’s on target. Read her if you care about empowering the poor and banishing poverty in the United States.”‘samuel Bowles, author of After the Wasteland: A Democratic Economics for the Year 2000