Tyranny of Kindness: Dismantling the Welfare System to End Poverty in America

by Theresa Funiciello

The Washington Post reported the Pulitzer-nominated Tyranny of Kindness to be one of the most important books on welfare and poverty to be published in the last thirty years. This book, part biography, part expose and part political theory, is an authoritative indictment of the welfare system in the United States. Funiciello's own first-hand experience with the "endless nightmare" of it as it was and in fact, continues to be under so-called "welfare reform" provides the emotional, heartrending backdrop to this powerful book. Acquainting us with the hard day to day realities of living on welfare, Funiciello exposes the absurdities of a system that hurts poor people -- espescially women and their children -- while spending most of its taxpayer dollars on an army of social welfare professionals whose interests are in fact alligned with the system -- not with poor people. Tyranny goes beyond an analysis of the injustices and inefficiencies of the system to offer a humane, sensible, cost-effective alternative.

Genres: Nonfiction, Social Justice, Politics, Sociology, Autobiography, Poverty, Social Welfare

340 pages, Paperback

First published August 5, 1994

Reviews

[Fishface · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very cutting book about the US welfare system. It's partly the personal memoir of a welfare recipient who became an advocate with the Welfare Rights Organization, but it's also a wide-ranging expose of what's wrong with a system that -- experienced from the seamy underside -- seems to be designed to keep American families desperately poor. It's not a balanced view, but it's very much worth reading.

[April · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this several years ago, but I remember it being very illuminating. One of those books I'd like to force a lot of people to read. My failing memory keeps it from getting the full five stars.

[Sofia · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book makes a very strong beginning by giving a detailed and first hand account of all the absurdities of the wellfare system that users have to experience everday. Her words feel very honest and very heart felt. Yet as the book progresses she begins to deepen and deepen into the politics of welfare, and though she might be right in most of her descriptions, she keeps filtering rage through her words... which makes the book very tough and tiring to read.