The Bootstrap Con: How "You're On Your Own" Was Sold to Keep Us Apart
The Bootstrap Con
In 1834, a labor paper made fun of a man who could supposedly lift himself over a fence by his own bootstraps. It was a joke, because nobody can do that. Starting in 2027, it’s a Medicaid requirement.
Will and Joshua trace how “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” went from punchline to moral test. The stops along the way are Hoover’s “rugged individualism,” Reagan’s welfare queen, the 1996 welfare law, and the drained public pools of Montgomery. Then they follow the test into the paperwork. In Arkansas, 18,000 people lost coverage in 2018 even though more than 95% of them…
The skinny
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