The poverty rate in 1950 was 30%. In 1965 it was 15%. After 49 years’ and the Great Society transfer of trillions of dollars of wealth, it is still, for all intents and purposes, 15%.
"The poor we will always have with us".
We are not all the same. There will always be people who are not productive enough to be worth paying enough to give them a middle-class standard of living, particularly since the definition of "poor" has always been a moving target.
In the US, how many people are really poor by the standards of rural India?