Editing A Modest Proposal (section)

==Population solutions==
George Wittkowsky argued that Swift's main target in ''A Modest Proposal'' was not the conditions in Ireland, but rather the can-do spirit of the times that led people to devise a number of illogical schemes that would purportedly solve social and economic ills.<ref name="Wittkowsky_p76">Wittkowsky, ''Swift’s Modest Proposal'', p. 76</ref> Swift was especially attacking projects that tried to fix population and labour issues with a simple cure-all solution.<ref name="Wittkowsky_p85">Wittkowsky, ''Swift’s Modest Proposal'', p. 85</ref> A memorable example of these sorts of schemes "involved the idea of running the poor through a [[joint-stock company]]".<ref name="Wittkowsky_p85"/> In response, Swift's ''Modest Proposal'' was "a burlesque of projects concerning the poor"<ref name="Wittkowsk_p88">Wittkowsky, ''Swift's Modest Proposal'', p. 88</ref> that were in vogue during the early 18th century.

Ian McBride argues that the point of  ''A Modest Proposal'' was to "find a suitably decisive means of dehumanizing the settlers who had failed so comprehensively to meet their social responsibilities."<ref>McBride, Ian (2019). "The Politics of ''A Modest Proposal'': Swift and the Irish Crisis of the Late 1720s." ''Past & Present''. '''244''' (1): 89–122.</ref> 
''A Modest Proposal'' also targets the calculating way people perceived the poor in designing their projects. The pamphlet targets reformers who "regard people as commodities".<ref name="Wittkowsky_p101">Wittkowsky, ''Swift's Modest Proposal'', p. 101</ref> In the piece, Swift adopts the "technique of a political arithmetician"<ref name="Wittkowsky_p95">Wittkowsky, ''Swift's Modest Proposal'', p. 95</ref> to show the utter ridiculousness of trying to prove any proposal with dispassionate statistics.

Critics differ about Swift's intentions in using this faux-mathematical philosophy. [[Edmund Wilson]] argues that statistically "the logic of the 'Modest proposal' can be compared with defence of crime (arrogated to [[Karl Marx|Marx]]) in which he argues that crime takes care of the superfluous population".<ref name="Wittkowsky_p95"/> Wittkowsky counters that Swift's satiric use of statistical analysis is an effort to enhance his satire that "springs from a spirit of bitter mockery, not from the delight in calculations for their own sake".<ref name="Wittkowsky_p98">Wittkowsky, ''Swift's Modest Proposal'', p. 98</ref>