Robert Lieberman

Robert C. Lieberman, who teaches political science and public policy at Columbia University, is the author of Shifting the Color Line: Race and the American Welfare State.

Recent Articles

Orwell's Poor and Ours

Orwell depicted the poor unsentimentally, but with compassion and economic realism. Today's conservative critics, who blame poverty on an absence of values, do neither.

Robert LiebermanNov 19, 2001

The very rich are different from you and me,"
F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote. "Yes," Ernest Hemingway teased
Fitzgerald, in a short story of his own, "they have more money." To
Fitzgerald, the rich inhabited a world apart. To Hemingway, the rich were just
like the rest of us, only with nicer furniture.

Why Americans Hate Welfare

Robert LiebermanNov 30, 2000

A curious paradox defines the politics of welfare in the United States. On the one hand, we are an extraordinarily generous and forgiving people. In 1998 Americans donated more than $170 billion to charity, and we have proven open to giving just about anyone (even, say, a philandering president) a second chance. Americans are willing, even enthusiastic, supporters of vast social programs aimed at protecting individuals from what Franklin Roosevelt called "the hazards and vicissitudes of life."

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Robert Lieberman

Recent Articles

Orwell's Poor and Ours

Orwell depicted the poor unsentimentally, but with compassion and economic realism. Today's conservative critics, who blame poverty on an absence of values, do neither.

Why Americans Hate Welfare