229 The English Poor Laws
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229 The English Poor Laws
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Poverty policy was deeply entangled with other obsessions of the 16th and 17th century England. Combine these obsessions with the local dictatorial power of the JPs and the concept of Common Law, and you get a surprising result.
There were many false starts in the European efforts to fight poverty in the early 16th century. Traditionalists, Protestants and Humanists all took quite similar steps towards fighting poverty.
They all made similar mistakes, putting the agency and control over money, at the wrong level of poverty fighting machinery. England took a different approach, from all of these.
We have talked a lot about these differences, experiment, fail, try again. Learn from the parish over there.
But all that effort over the poor resulted in substantial taxation. 20% of all land taxes went towards helping the poor. One obsession for the JPs (can we say as a consequence?) was the employment of the poor. Combine that with common law, Joan Thirsk style economic projects, and businesses are allowed to go forward with projects that would create employment that before would have been vetoed by other interested parties.
Things changed, culture changed, law changed.