Opus 2018-035: Who Is Winning the War on Poverty?, part 1 of 2

The War on Poverty has been waged for about 50 years now.  It was instituted by Lyndon B. Johnson to try to end poverty in our country.  How is it working?  It isn’t.  Of course you need statistics to get an answer and statistics are usually used to spin the conversation you want it to go but consider this spin from Forbes magazine,

“Has the War on Poverty been a failure?  Well, of course it has.  If you devote 50 years and $21.5 trillion (in 4Q2013 dollars) to anything, and people are arguing about whether it was a success or a failure, then you can be sure that it was a failure.

“Have you noticed that, 50+ years from its inception, no one is suggesting that the Apollo program was a failure?”

The statistics become a factor when you try to understand the data.  One chart I was looking at from a government budget site confessed in the footnote that the way of gathering the data had changed at one point.  Strangely enough the change made things look better.

We had another “war of poverty” in our history that went under the name “The New Deal”.  It also was instituted by Democrats.  It too was heralded as a great success even though it was World War II that finally brought us out.  Many would argue that the actions of Franklin D. Roosevelt actually exacerbated the problem and extended the depression.  To the Progressives it worked because it kept them in power, but that is a discussion no one wants to hear.

Both the New Deal and the Great Society (official name of the War on Poverty) were dealing with people out of work and destitute.  The first attempt did not solve the problem but it also did not destroy a whole group of people the way the welfare programs of today have done.  The WPA and CCC did not create a permanent underclass the way ADC, WIC and EBT have done.  Why the different response to the welfare of the Great Depression from the War on Poverty? 

To be continued...

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