Monday, May 26, 2014

What Would a Real War on Poverty Look Like?

What Would a Real War on Poverty Look Like?:
"This year marks the 50th anniversary of the “War on Poverty” (announced in January of 1964) and the “Great Society” (announced 50 years ago yesterday).
These were America’s two great experiments in using the power of the federal government to transform and radically improve the country.
Fifty years and some 15 or 20 trillion dollars—depending on how you count—is a pretty good test and plenty of time to conclude that it has failed.
As I have argued elsewhere, the result of the War on Poverty has been to ameliorate some of the effects of poverty, but not to ameliorate poverty itself.
In other words, the result has been to “make the poor more secure in their poverty,” which is precisely what LBJ promised not to do. "

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