Ep. 81
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 were already working or should have been exempt. Georgia spent $54.2 million administering its “model” program and $26.1 million on actual care. Deloitte was paid more than $50 million for eligibility software that froze and wiped applicants’ information, and Maximus is telling investors the new federal rules mean growth.
We hear out the other side, too: what the welfare-to-work research shows, and what it doesn’t. Then we ask the question underneath all of it. Who gets paid when needing help looks like a character flaw?