It's Cloward-Piven 24/7/365 Now

Virtually every action of the Democrat Party is designed to destroy capitalism, destroy social cohesion and collapse the American economy.

The “Cloward-Piven Strategy”, cooked up by Columbia University sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and his wife Frances Fox Piven (both longtime members of the Democratic Socialists of America), was conceived as a way to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.

Their strategy was one designed to provoke rebellion. In 1970, Richard Cloward told the New York Times that poor people can only advance when “the rest of society is afraid of them” and rather than placating the poor with government hand-outs, activists should work to sabotage and destroy the welfare system. The authors also asserted that: 1) the collapse of the welfare state would ignite a political and financial crisis that would rock the country, 2) poor people would rise in revolt and 3) only then would “the rest of society” accept their demands.

Everywhere we look, objective eyes can see that Cloward-Piven is alive and well within Democrat policies.

A few examples off the top of my head:

• Democrats go soft on crime, hard on police, then claim gun violence is not caused by people who no longer fear consequences. They blame the gun and people want more enforcement and better policing.

• They stop prosecuting crime, facilitate theft and then blame companies for closing stores and leaving markets.

• Their high crime policies have driven down housing values in cities, robbing property owners of the equity in their homes and driving out those who can afford to move. City leaders call for federal help.

• They have no interest in solving homelessness, drug addiction or mental illness. Their policies and neglect are creating more homelessness, drug dependency and mental illness because all that leads to more government dependency.

• Their spending, economic policies, and inflation drive the lower and middle economic classes closer to poverty to justify more government handouts.

• They drive the country toward bankruptcy just so they can call any effort at fiscal responsibility racist and "extreme".

• They create racial division with policies they know will never be enacted (reparations) and then act surprised when racial animus increases.

• They destroy women's socioeconomic progress and athletic achievements by demanding males be allowed to compete as women.

• They open our borders to overwhelm state resources to encourage them to call for federal help.

• They facilitate illegal drug use and then complain about the crime and social decay it causes.

The common threads?

All these are situations that have answers that are being willfully ignored or actively discouraged and every one of them facilitates more government control at the federal level.

According to the Tax Foundation, in FY 2022 Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other mandatory spending (including welfare programs) accounted for over two thirds of federal spending (71%) and Social Security and Medicare, taken together, will be responsible for nearly 80 percent of the federal deficit’s rise between 2023 and 2032 (according to Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projections).

While the recent performative screaming and gnashing of teeth about the debt ceiling focused on discretionary spending and defense (which are respectively 16% and 13%of all spending), unlike discretionary spending, which must be voted on by Congress every year during the appropriations process, Social Security and Medicare spending are mandated under current law – baked in as it were. Add to that the fact that current payroll taxes are paying for retirees under this (technically insolvent) system, and you can already see the hands of Cloward and Piven in this overload.

As Herb Stein’s law asserts, when something cannot go on forever it will stop – and this cannot go on forever.

The current debate about federal borrowing and spending is no longer economic, we are merely bargaining over the schedule of our collapse as a nation.