The form that a distinctly liberal approach to poverty should take had preoccupied neoliberal circles since the 1938 Walter Lippmann Colloquium. There, Rougier had posed the opening question: 'can economic liberalism meet the social demands of the masses?' The neoliberals worried that it was the planned economy's promise to guarantee a 'vital minimum' that 'attracts the masses to the totalitarian states'. In The Good Society, Lippmann himself had argued that what the classical economists dismissed as 'frictions and disturbances' in the market order were, in the eyes of their victims, 'cruel injustices, misery, defeat and frustration'. The success of the competitive market, he argued, required a social policy that would assist people to adapt themselves to the market's demands. There could be no question of 'taking from the rich and giving doles to the poor'; rather, social insurance should help people make choices within the margin of freedom the market allowed, by tiding them over while they learnt the skills for new occupations or moved elsewhere in search of work.

Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, loc. 200