The Third Pillar: How Markets and the State Leave the Community Behind

by Raghuram G. Rajan

In 1963, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. urged Americans to honour the promissory note the founding fathers had given that ‘all men – yes, black men as well as white men – would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ When he declared, ‘We refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice,’ he was speaking both figuratively and literally.16 The Civil Rights movement undoubtedly pricked the nation’s conscience, and, when coupled with the public’s generosity buoyed by rising incomes, helped overcome America’s traditional reluctance to expand the safety net. President Lyndon Johnson, who had lived among, and worked with, the poor during his youth and through the Depression years, provided persuasive leadership. The political attractiveness of targeting the votes of blacks who had migrated from southern agricultural jobs for the industrial jobs in northern cities gave politicians the incentive to follow.17 Congress enacted a radical set of government- and community-based programmes intended to wage war on poverty and make the United States into Johnson’s Great Society. Funding was increased significantly for welfare, especially for the indigent elderly, for health car...

Martin lujther king & health+education for all program