Whenever politicians and pundits talk about infrastructure projects that create jobs and put people back to work, they invariably trot out their favorite projects and hook them up to as many current issues as they can. If they think green jobs are the wave of the future and global warming is the direst threat to the survival of the human race since Komogators, they come up with something like a massive investment in renewable energy to put people back to work and slow down global warming. Things like that.
I have my own pet infrastructure projects -- cleaning up Fresh Kills Landfill and other toxic dumps across America, for example. That one might be incredibly labor intensive.
Or how about something like the Tennessee Valley Authority along the Rio Grande and the Colorado rivers?
I don't know what it would take to clean up and dam up the Rio Grande and Colorado rivers along the U.S. - Mexico border to produce hydroelectric power, but I know you could put solar and wind farms, desalinization plants and hydroponic gardens along those rivers. You could put factories with fences around them there. You could create Economic Development Zones -- joint ventures between the U.S. and Mexican governments, the border states and communities, and the private sector -- guaranteed to attract businessmen eager to create great fortunes by getting in early on government programs. And the power plants and solar and wind farms, along with the desalination plants, factories and who knows what else entrepreneurs might crowd into the development zones, would create a massive barrier to illegal immigration, while providing thousands of jobs.
How the “Speenhamland” analogy has been used on the U.S. right
| Thinker / source | U.S. law or program they liken to Speenhamland | Ill-effects they say the program reproduces | Repeals/roll-backs they recommend |
|---|---|---|---|
| Martin Anderson – White-House memo “A Short History of a ‘Family Security System’ ” (Apr. 1969) | President Nixon’s proposed Family Assistance Plan (guaranteed income / negative-income-tax) | • “Pauperization of the masses” — wage subsidies become a ceiling not a floor. • Encourages idleness & fraud. thecorrespondent.comcambridge.org | Urged Nixon to kill the bill; the plan died in the Senate. |
| Henry Hazlitt – Man vs. the Welfare State (1969) & Nat. Review essays | Any guaranteed annual income / NIT plus 1960s cash welfare (AFDC) | • Depresses market wages, swells relief rolls. • Replicates Speenhamland’s “bottomless” cost spiral. papers.ssrn.comcambridge.org | Scrap proposals for a GAI/NIT and repeal federal cash-assistance programs, leaving only locally-financed, strictly limited relief. |
| George Gilder – Wealth and Poverty (1981) | Great-Society welfare complex (AFDC, Food Stamps, housing aid) | • “Moral pauperization”: subsidies to non-work, illegitimacy, crime. • Employers shift cost of low pay onto taxpayers. thecorrespondent.com | End open-ended welfare entitlements, substitute work requirements & private-charity support. |
| Charles Murray – Losing Ground (1984) | Same Great-Society programs + early Medicaid expansions | • Welfare behaves like Speenhamland by making non-work the rational choice; breaks families. thecorrespondent.com | Let most means-tested programs expire, or (later in In Our Hands) replace them wholesale with a flat universal grant funded by ending Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, AFDC/TANF, SNAP & housing aid. |
| Robert Rector & Edwin Rubenstein – Heritage & Social-Contract papers (2009) | Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) | • Modern Speenhamland “wage subsidy.” • Holds wages down, rewards employers of very low-skill labor, fuels illegitimacy & immigration fraud. thesocialcontract.com | Phase out or cap the EITC, pair tight work-rules with lower immigration and a higher market wage. |
| Kevin D. Williamson – National Review column “Chaos in the Family…” (2016) | SNAP, SSDI, EITC & Medicaid expansion | • Creates small-town “dependency archipelagos”—exactly the rural stagnation Polanyi blamed on Speenhamland. etd.ohiolink.edu | Shrink or time-limit the programs; tell able-bodied adults to move to where the jobs are instead of subsidising immobility. |
Common threads in the conservative “Speenhamland” critique
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Wage-subsidy logic – All the writers stress that programs topping-up earned income (or replacing it outright) let employers pay less while taxpayers fill the gap, just as parish relief did after 1795.
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Moral hazard – They echo Malthus/Ricardo’s 19th-century charge that “outdoor relief” bred larger families, idleness, and vice; the modern version is incentives to single parenthood, long-term unemployment, or opioid-era disability.
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Fiscal “bottomless pit” – Rising caseloads and benefit levels are portrayed as evidence Speenhamland’s cost-spiral is repeating.
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Preferred remedy: contraction, not reform – With the partial exception of Murray’s later flat-grant plan, these authors call for outright repeal or strict caps/work-tests rather than redesigning subsidies.
In short, the Speenhamland story supplies conservatives with a ready historical parable: wage-or-income supplements meant to fight poverty can entrench it instead. Their policy prescription is consistent—scale the supplements back (or scrap them) before they entrench a new American “universal pauperism.”
