As noted by the Chicago School legal scholar, Richard A. Epstein, the rules of social welfare should “follow the basic pattern of natural obligation as it is perceived to arise within families.” The task of neoliberal welfare reform is “to transform [this] inclination into duty” and thus to “derive an 'is' from an 'ought' “—a precise translation of the poor law philosophy of natural charity within the family.

Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, loc. 241