{"id":57906,"date":"2025-07-22T01:00:43","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T05:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=57906"},"modified":"2025-07-21T10:04:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T14:04:11","slug":"qotd-social-assistance-as-a-western-cargo-cult","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2025\/07\/22\/qotd-social-assistance-as-a-western-cargo-cult\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Social assistance as a Western cargo cult"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right; padding: 0px 0px 10px 25px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>Part of the problem with social policy here in America is that it is conducted like a South Pacific <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cargo_cult\" target=\"_blank\">Cargo Cult<\/a>. We looked around and saw that the majority of successful people owned their own homes and had college degrees, so we figured that if we grabbed any old slacker and subsidized them a home and a college degree, then they, too, would become successful. It&#8217;s got cause and effect completely out of whack.<\/p>\n<p>Tamara Keel, <a href=\"https:\/\/booksbikesboomsticks.blogspot.com\/2020\/06\/from-conversation-elsewhere.html\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;From a conversation elsewhere&#8230;&#8221;, <em>View From The Porch<\/em><\/a>, 2020-06-10.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Part of the problem with social policy here in America is that it is conducted like a South Pacific Cargo Cult. We looked around and saw that the majority of successful people owned their own homes and had college degrees, so we figured that if we grabbed any old slacker and subsidized them a home [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,84,41,13],"tags":[426,764],"class_list":["post-57906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-government","category-quotations","category-usa","tag-housing","tag-university"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-f3Y","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57906"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96712,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57906\/revisions\/96712"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}