From helping hand to five-finger discount

America’s debate over poverty has undergone a remarkable and troubling transformation. Two centuries ago, the central challenge was persuading needy people to accept public assistance. Today, the challenge is preventing people from fraudulently claiming benefits to which they were never entitled.

That trajectory tells us something profound about the nation’s changing moral culture.

What had once been viewed as a last resort gradually came to be seen as an entitlement detached from personal responsibility.

Alexis de Tocqueville noticed something remarkable when he traveled through America in the early 1830s. Unlike Europe, where poverty often produced permanent dependence upon the state or aristocratic patrons, Americans possessed an almost universal determination to remain independent. They formed voluntary associations to care for neighbors in distress, but they regarded prolonged dependence as