Last episode we had the emotional episode about the sufferings of paupers in 16th century Italy. So we are now done.. with autophagy, cannibalism, dung eating, baker murdering, and all that.
We are now moving on to a European wide response to poverty at the policy level. Bronislaw Geremek’s Poverty A History is a primary source. Then when we move on to the specifically British response of the poor laws we will mainly be using Paul Slack’s Poverty and Policy in Tudor England. And a long essay by Paul Fideler called Poverty, Policy and Providence.
Some of the specific incidents come from Camporesi’s Bread of Dreams.
“Social Science has from its very inception, always recognized the importance of poverty, and its two most vital questions, what causes poverty and how is it to be eradicated.”
I’ll point out that the philosopher Hannah Arendt, named John Locke’s notion that wealth is the product of human creativity. Therefore, it is theoretically unlimited, opening the possibility that poverty can be eliminated.
I have to mention that, because the question of what causes poverty is sort of foolish, physics causes poverty. Humans have to expend effort merely to live and creating wealth requires a high degree of coordination and cooperation. The how is poverty to be eradicated question is more interesting, because it has happened and failed in many different ways.
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