Volume 20, Number 4 · March 22, 1973
Who Crushed Nixon's Revolution?
By Tom Wicker
The Politics of a Guaranteed Income: The Nixon Administration and the Family Assistance Plan
by Daniel P. Moynihan
Random House, 579 pp., $15.00
In April, 1969, Arthur Burns, then a counselor to President Nixon, now the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, launched a strong attack within the White House on the 'family security system' about to be adopted by Mr. Nixon. Burns caused to be prepared, among other documents, 'A Short History of a 'Family Security System' ' taken from Karl Polanyi's account of an eighteenth-century British experiment in poor relief commonly called 'Speenhamland.' Polanyi's account claimed that the income assistance provided to wage workers by Speenhamland had shattered the self-respect, productivity, and independence of the recipients. The Nixon plan, Burns suggested, would have the same result in twentieth-century America.
Review, 5426 words
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