The neoliberal critique of welfare had a profound influence on the subsequent history of American social policy and informed both direct efforts to revive the poor laws and much more general interventions into the realm of fiscal and monetary policy, all of which had the effect of transferring economic responsibility to the family. As Governor of California in the late 1960s and 1970s, Ronald Reagan was one of the first to implement the desiderata of the neoliberals with respect to welfare reform.

Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, loc. 242