Suppose that the government decided that jalopies were a menace to public safety and a blight on the beauty of our highways, and therefore took them away from their drivers. Suppose, then, that to replenish the supply of automobiles, it gave these drivers a hundred dollars each to buy a good used car and also made special grants to General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler to lower the cost--although not necessarily the price of Cadillacs, Lincolns, and Imperials by a few hundred dollars. Absurd as this may sound, change the jalopies to slum housing, and I have described with only slight poetic license, the fifteen years of a federal program called urban renewal.
-Herbert J. Gans, "The Failure of Urban Renewal," Commentary (April 1965)
What was considered absurd enough to use as a derogatory comparison, becomes, under the current administration public policy.
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