Politics of Poverty and Social Welfare Policy - Essay Example

Moreover, class, state and race have given shape to the way political actors behaved inside and outside the government possibilities and limits of state action in the United States. In the early American history poverty emanated from the processes of immigration, conquest, and the enforced labor that had accompanied the settlement of Europeans in North America thus the founding of United States. O’Brien( 9) argues that international development has been directing its efforts in global politics of alleviating poverty focusing on the poor and seeking policies that would lift them out of the bondage of poverty, be protected and later be compensated.

This discourse needs to pave way for the global politics of welfare state rebuilding focusing on the alliances that are required to be there between the poor and the non-poor. The global neo-liberalism social policy has been facing challenges in the recent times to the extent of being seen as residual safety net approach. The World Bank, IMF and other aid agencies are being tasked with eroding the flawed assumption that issues related to poverty could be solved without tackling the issue of equity, social inclusion and the states’ role in encouraging development projects for the good of all social groups.

This is because they utilized a more supervisory and directive stance in imposing market principles on the developing nations that are considered as poor. The “Washington Consensus” on international development in the 1990s was a fragment of the American welfare reform in the 1990s. In the recent times the nations that are still developing have been obliged to embrace the neoliberal-paternalistic policies for dealing with their own communities that are impoverished (E. O'Brien, p.20-22). Most of the welfare states in Europe were built for the workers and not necessarily the poor accommodating the needs of the middle class by provision of services that they would be ready to pay taxes.

In Latin America and Africa, import substitution and state led socialist post colonial development respectively resulted in embryonic partial welfare states. These state lead strategies of development were challenged and later destroyed during the structural period of adjustments. Therefore, to alleviate the issue of poverty we must ensure the country has higher education, primary and city hospitals together with rural clinics, wage related pensions, social pensions as well as transfer of cash to the poor.

But to some extent a focus on the poor undermines the commitment of the middle class to pay taxes (E. E. O'Brien, p.10-12). Regulation of working classes in society which Pierre Bourdieu called, “the left hand” of the state is symbolized by public health care, education, social security, social housing and social assistance is being out of date in the United States or supplemented in the Western Europe by a ruling through its “right hand” where the courts, the police, and the prison system re gradually becoming active and intrusive in the social spaces’ lower regions.

Most governments are trying to undercut the new legitimacy of militants and “active minorities” within emerging social movements that is acquired through the daily struggles in order to prevent further