An analysis of the article “The Best of Intentions, The Worst of Results” by Irving Kristol.
Examining the welfare systems of the United States through the eyes of the writer of this article. Shows how the state has all the right intentions for providing for the poor and underprivileged but the effectiveness of the methods are problematic.
“The article “The Best of Intentions, The Worst of Results” by Irving Kristol is a critical commentary about America’s welfare system, particularly the theories presented (to explain this particular policy/social problem) by Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, authors of Regulating the Poor: The Function of Public Welfare in explaining and answering whether the welfare system is an efficient policy that helps people survive everyday living or whether this policy/social system is one of the hindrance in America’s poverty problem. Taking the view of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s character in his book Demons, Pyotr Verkhovensky, who is said to be patterned after the person of Russian revolutionist and Nihilist Sergei Nechaev, the said article by Kristol can be used in analogy of the revolutions that happened in Dostoevsky’s novel. In trying to impose a social change, a social change for the betterment of the American citizens, particularly on and below the poverty line, the social welfare was formed and implemented.”