Posted on 08/08/2023 7:27:22 AM PDT by Starman417
Recently the Supreme Court put an end to Joe Biden’s efforts to gift erstwhile college students almost a trillion dollars in “debt relief”. That’s a lot of money… but in reality that’s a tiny fraction of the money the government has wasted on redistribution, AKA social programs over the last six decades.
Next year the United States will commemorate the 60th anniversary of the War on Poverty, initiated by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. The War’s programs initially started on a modest scale but have expanded almost parabolically since. At the 50th anniversary of the launch the government had spent more than $22 trillion on various welfare and redistribution programs and today spends $1 trillion a year on said programs… not including various “targeted” expenditures under Social Security or Medicare, which make the true total simply unknowable. To put that in perspective, $1 trillion is greater than the GDP of 194 of the world’s 213 countries.
Is this massive expenditure justified by the results of the War on Poverty? Initially one might suggest the results say yes. As of 2021, poverty in the United States hovered at approximately 11.6%, down from the approximately 18% rate in 1964 when the War on Poverty began. That’s a reduction of 6.6%, or almost one third.
A closer look however reveals that that 6.6% reduction after an expenditure of $30 trillion seems underwhelming to say the least. To see the full picture of the failed War on Poverty one need only look at the poverty rate over the 15 years prior to its beginning. In 1949 the poverty rate in the United States stood at 34%, fully one third of the nation’s population. Over the next 15 years, without significant government redistribution programs, indeed, without the War on Poverty, the poverty rate fell almost by half, falling from 34% to 18%, a reduction of a full 16 percentage points. So, without government spending significant money poverty fell 16% in a period of 15 years, or 1.08% per year. But with government spending more than $30 trillion over the next 55 years it fell by a total of just 6.4%, or .12% per year! That essentially means that without government intervention the poverty rate was falling 10 times faster than it did once government programs kicked in.
And that 11.6% itself deserves a closer look. In 2014, when the War on Poverty turned 50, the American poverty rate was still at 15%. That means that after spending $20 trillion over the previous half century the government had successfully reduced poverty by a mere 3%. When Barack Obama he entered the White House in 2008 the poverty rate stood at 12.5%. It jumped up to 15% for four years before dropping back to 12.5% by the end of his presidency and where it was when Donald Trump took the White House. A mere three years later Trump’s economic renaissance had reduced poverty by 2%, bringing it to its lowest level in history, 10.5%, before the Covid scam derailed the prosperity engine. To put that in perspective, Donald Trump’s economy brought poverty down by 2% in 3 years, fully half as much as government spending did in the 53 years between 1964 and 2016.
And of course the income numbers only tell part of the story. Sadly, there is much more to it.
An unintended consequence of the War on Poverty appears to have been a skyrocketing of single-parent households, which is a significant driver of poverty. In 1964, around 4% of American children were born to unwed mothers. By 2021, this percentage increased a full ten times to 40%. Under the heading of Unintended Consequences one could observe that the welfare programs intended to save children from poverty, have, by making it economically and socially viable for single-parent households to exist, in fact stranded many children in poverty and worse, inflicting on them the coincident pathologies of poor education and crime, not coincidentally, both also being consequences of government failure.
(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net...
It really depends on which side you think they were on.
Government interference in the Free Market Economy is the CAUSE of much poverty and failure.
The War on Poverty = The Federal Pig Trough Act
Biden ignored the sc r3cently over student loans, and recorded his edict on the issue- did the sc come back again and issue another ruling to stop his amended rule or law or whatever they cal. It?
In 1964, around 4% of American children were born to unwed mothers. By 2021, this percentage increased a full ten times to 40%.
Many of us remember a time, when there was a social stigma against having children out of wedlock.
Nowadays, there is no stigma; we as a society are completely non-judgemental about such behaviors.
But we aren’t allowed to talk about that.
Seems consistent with the other wars our "nation" has lost in the last several decades.
From the point of view of a totalitarian it's been a roaring success.
“In 2014, when the War on Poverty turned 50, the American poverty rate was still at 15%. That means that after spending $20 trillion over the previous half century the government had successfully reduced poverty by a mere 3%.” Who can even assure us that government spending is even what brought it down? Seems like Donald Trumps programs may have helped, but he is considered a failure. Compared to the guy we have now, Trump was possibly a howling success. I guess why they want to impeach him; to keep Biden from looking any worse than he already does.
When you subsidize something, you get more of it. This includes irresponsible behavior. Liberals have never been able to understand this concept.
We don’t want people dying on the streets. A welfare floor will be established somewhere. But the left is now committed to equalizing outcomes in the name of social justice, which creates a blank check for irresponsibility.
Systemic racism has now become an added smokescreen. Every bad decision by a black person is ultimately a white person’s fault. All performance gaps are white people’s fault.
This does not apply in any domain in which black people excel.
When your first instinct is to wage war on everything, you have already lost.
I think this accurate, because convincing with agreements, contract law and making deals towards a better future is the probably only real future.
Yup—if you want to be poor and stay poor for your entire life the easiest way is to be an unwed mother.
“We don’t want people dying on the streets. A welfare floor will be established somewhere.”
The trick is not to reward people for bad behavior.
Welfare must require work—hard work—unpleasant work.
Reprogram EBT cards to pay for rice and beans only-a complete protein. Just think what it will do for the obesity problem.
The “war on poverty” also created thousands and thousand of “nonprofits” who were given government grants decade after decade.
This created a powerful lobbying group to keep their gravy train coming...
*Reprogram EBT cards to pay for rice and beans only-a complete protein. Just think what it will do for the obesity problem.*
No handout for those with money for tattoos.
This 👆👆👆👆👆👆👆👆 👀
Mission accomplished.
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