Posted on 03/22/2015 1:05:12 PM PDT by SamAdams76
Over 50 years ago, with much fanfare, President Lyndon Johnson declared "unconditional war" on poverty in America.
Since that bold proclamation, we have expended over $22 trillion of our national treasure in this so-called "war". Much of that coming out of the paychecks of working people and transferred to "poor" people by way of welfare, food stamps and a large variety of other government programs.
Despite the expenditure of this enormous amount of taxpayer money, the problem of poverty has not gotten better. In fact, it has gotten worse. Even more alarming, the middle class, which was growing rapidly and thriving back in the 1960s, has hit a brick wall. Stagnant wages and ever increasing taxes has forced most middle class families into a "living paycheck to paycheck" scenario.
Where it was once possible for a working class man with a steady job to purchase a home, keep his wife at home to raise the children, and then send those children to a decent college, it is now necessary for most middle class families to have both husband and wife in full-time employment just to make ends meet, while the children are shuttled back and forth to day care or to stay with older relatives. For many in the working class, college for their children is now a pipe dream unless a scholarship or financial aid is involved, as college tuition has been increasing at an exponential rate. Where most colleges charged just a few hundred dollars per semester in 1964, it is not unusual to see $10,000 or more per semester, when books and other costs are factored in, at the better schools.
Back in 1964, the United States had a booming economy and the national debt stood at $312 billion. Today, our national debt stands in excess of $17 trillion, which for the first time exceeds our annual economic output (GDP).
In 1964, the future was bright and we were talking about "going to the moon." These days, there is no passion about space exploration. For all but our older generations, the moon missions of Apollo are nothing but a footnote in history. Many question whether or not they actually happened.
The "war on poverty" has virtually bankrupted America and it has proven to be about as effective as fighting WW2 with BB guns and dropping water balloons on Germany and Japan from hang gliders. Walk through any urban neighborhood and you will see the blight and the hopelessness that exist. Those neighborhood are actually worse than they were in 1964. At least back then, there was a sense of community and hope that things would get better. After all, this was America.
Instead of giving the poor a helping hand, our welfare programs have simply institutionalized poverty by removing any incentive to rise above it.
If one's basic needs are met with an automatic government check, one could easily adapt to that lifestyle and actually prefer that situation to having to get up early in the morning and find a job.
As a result we now have multiple generations of families who have done nothing but collect welfare, food stamps and other benefits. Entire generations of poor men have been emasculated because the government has taken over the role of being the provider for their families. In fact, we have situations where the mothers don't want the fathers involved in raising their children as this might cut into the benefits they "have coming to them" from Uncle Sam. In some cases, the mothers don't even want to know who the fathers were. All the easier to ride the welfare gravy train for the rest of their lives. Is it any wonder that these unwanted men often turn to a life of crime and violence? By the way, going to prison is just another form of welfare for many poor men. Three squares and a cot. Many of these men have so adapted to prison life that they don't even fear it anymore, creating a revolving door in our prison systems.
Granted, it's not always an easy life being on welfare but in their minds, it sure beats having to go to work every day.
The welfare state has created a sense of entitlement with millions of "poor" people and the numbers of people on the dole continue to climb year after year. In fact, it is so easy to get on welfare in America that we have millions of people pouring over our borders to get in on it.
Tell a liberal person that the War on Poverty is a sham, an utter failure, and the likely response will be that you are a racist or that you don't have any compassion. But the failure of this war is apparent as soon as you leave the affluent suburbs (where most of these liberals reside) and enter the gritty urban areas of decay.
Detroit, Ferguson, Newark, Camden, Bridgeport, Oakland, East LA, Atlantic City...just a few of the cities that are almost unlivable due to grinding poverty, high crime and a general feeling of hopelessness. The people that live in these areas are angry. Many of them have no prospects for stable employment. Their education is poor, their work ethic is non existent and they look at their more prosperous neighbors with envy and hate.
There is no doubt whatsoever that the "war on poverty" is an utter failure. We might as well have taken that $22 trillion dollars ($22,000,000,000,000) and shoveled it all into a furnace for the good it did us fighting poverty. And yet the liberal response is always that we need to pony up yet more or our money to solve the poverty problem.
I was motivated to write this piece this afternoon because I took a Sunday morning drive and passed through the "not-so-nice" parts of Southern CT coastal towns of West Haven, Bridgeport and Norwalk. Those neighborhoods were filthy, with garbage in the streets, cracked sidewalks, barren playgrounds with everything still standing vandalized and covered in graffiti. There is no pride in these neighborhoods. Houses are unkempt, windows boarded up in many cases, the sidings and roofs peeling away. Most of the people in the streets were slouching down the street with mean expressions on their faces, wearing hoodies and in general trying to project a tough-guy "don't mess with me" image.
I think about the $22 trillion dollars we flushed down the toilet this past 50 years to address this problem and instead, the problem has only gotten worse. Our national treasure has been squandered and our once striving middle class has been squeezed time and time again with higher taxes in order to keep these miserable people in welfare checks and food stamps - and the taxman comes for more year after year after year. The only reward these middle class people ever seem to get is to be called selfish and racist because they don't give enough to "help the poor."
When will it end? How much more money do we have to sling at this problem until we realize that government welfare is not the solution? When will we realize that gainful employment and a solid family structure is the ticket out of poverty? When will we stop rewarding women for having children out of wedlock and start holding fathers accountable for supporting their children as well? When will we make it once again an embarrassment to be on public assistance, a scandal to be pregnant and unmarried, and make our prisons a place you do not want to be. When will our working people be respected once again and held up as role models for others? When will we as a society restore dignity to all working people, whether they are a doctor, a plumber, a store clerk or a janitor?
Ronald Reagan once spoke of a time where if we allowed the welfare state to continue to grow, we would eventually have more people riding in the wagon than pulling it.
I believe that time has finally come to America. And if we don't do something to reverse this trend of doling out yet more welfare benefits by taking even more tax bites out of the people who actually work hard to keep this country running, we are in for some very ugly times.
Mis-spell ‘’bankers’’.
NOT going to get any better under existing system...people who don't want to work won't work. Simple as that.
The so-called war on poverty has created more poverty and was intended to keep blacks voting for democRATS. Secondarily, the money had to be “administered” and the graft of that administrative cost has created legions of bureaucrats who are also dependent on that administrative graft. And those administrators are also, Dues paying union memebers who vote....democRAT
“The War on Poverty” was never about ending poverty. It was about securing an undefeatable democrat majority. What was it LBJ said. Something about ‘someone’ voting for them for 200 years???
++++
Yes, it was Lyndon Johnson. And he was right although 200 years may be on the low side. Freepers should do a little research and learn for themselves who that ‘someone’ actually is.
If your definition is that you'll "have them (insert plural of the 'n' word here) voting DemocRAT for the next 200 years, then you'd have to conclude that it has been a resounding success.
So far.
Only 150 years to go. 'Course, if they haven't figured it out by now there's no reason to believe they'll figure it out in the next century and a half.
Liberals, socialists, communists, totalitarians seem to think their next brand of re-distribution will make all equal. It never has worked and never will. Simply, because it takes away incentive from the producers, as we all know.
I witnessed it personally in the 60's. They started their hippie communes with the best intentions, but when some didn't want to work as hard for the same communal benefits, those who did started to leave out of frustration.
Of course, the commune fell apart once the producers were gone. I laughed my non-political ass off because I knew before hand it would never work while I was working my butt off in a widget factory.
I find it amazing that the 60's hippies who are now "educators" in our higher learning institutions still believe such nonsense. You'd think they would learn after all the failed models of socialism throughout history. What's worse is that they teach that failed system to our youth. Still, they write their doctorate thesis, papers, books trying explain how great socialism is and how it will lift all boats. Pure nonsense...much like many defense attorneys do with their parsing and spin.
Someone with a great deal more insight into the way the world works than any politician, long before this foolishness started, observed, “The poor you have with you always.”
The attempt to abolish poverty was always a fool’s errand, and while succoring the poor is incumbent upon any civilization, especially a Christian civilization, the notion that state subsidies paid to the poor is the way to accomplish this overlooks the indisputable fact of economic and social life that one will have more of whatever the state chooses to subsidize.
I'll call them for who they are: black trash with EBT's; hispanic trash with EBT's; white trash with EBT's. They are all trash to me. Notice I didn't mention Asians?
Something that's becoming more prevalent in TV shows and movies is the theme of a single black/hispanic/white woman raising her children alone. Some are touching, but few ever make a point of stating where's the father.
When did this country stop making genetic fathers responsible? Don't we still have "childhood support" on the books? If so, when did we stop enforcing such laws? Talk about billions for "the children".
The above is especially a problem within the black community, or whatever they call themselves today. Oh right, African-Americans...as if any of them have to do with Africa. If as white man and my ancestors orginated from Africa, could I be considered an African-American?
Africa is a continent you dumb sh*ts reading this. The same as you whiny liberals who claim that us who oppose some in the Middle-East are racists. Here's a fact for you: the Middle-East is composed of different ethnic groups, not race. BTW, your hero Obambi wants to give everthing to Persians not Arabs. Do you even know the difference?
The other name for “War on Poverty” is “Robbing the Productive”
Coupled with recreational breeding...the freebies are in exchange for breeding pawns/new clients for the state (many people are employed by the “poverty industry”). If our welfare population actually straightened out, unemployment would jump 20% as the administrators of the hatcheries are idled.
Does n*****s mean “niggers”?
Stop letting others determine what you can and cannot say.
But seriously.....how is a black man going to get a decent job?
Only about half of black males graduate from high school. High school!
Of those who make it to college, only about one in six will graduate, and that’s with affirmative action help.
And the real shocker is that according to the Sentencing Project report (August 2013), “one of every three black American males born today can expect to go to prison in his lifetime”.
I don’t know the answer to my question. Do you?
And maybe that is a term Johnson used but others of us don't care to use.
I can’t actually USE that word without getting fired. It’s sad, but true. And, I have been taunted to use it.
Now as for the answer to the question, it is quite simple.
End the government welfare programs today. End all of them. If you want to give "90 day notice" - I'm fine with that. So let's say at the end of June, all welfare and food stamp (EBT) payments will come to an abrupt and permanent end.
Will there be chaos?
Yes, there will be chaos.
But in the end, everybody in the urban ghettos are going to have to pull up their pants, put on a belt, turn around their ballcaps (or better yet, take them off) and go get themselves a legitimate job.
It won't be an easy transition. They will holler and cry and take to the streets. Cold turkey is the best approach. Eventually, most of them will find work, some will open businesses, and the economy will boom once again.
Will people starve? Of course they won't starve. Remember that our number 1 health problem in this country is obesity and the "poor" are obese in huge numbers. Trust me, they could afford to miss a few meals. But will they genuinely go hungry? Of course not. Churches, charitable organizations and concerned citizens will setup food banks and soup kitchens and such. Nobody will starve. And when the working classes get a break on their taxes because we no longer need to fund the mammoth welfare system, well they will be able to throw in a few dollars as well, and maybe even some hours of volunteer work.
Everybody will get fed but it won't be like the days of the EBT cards where they get to go to Piggly Wiggly or Stop & Shop and fill their carriages with Oreo cookies, Doritos and frozen microwave pizzas. They will get the soup, some cheese and crackers, maybe a piece of meat.
Yes, they will want to go get a job for themselves because they will soon tire of the soup kitchen food and the "past-the-expiration-date" of the food items at the food pantry.
They won't starve but they will get motivated to get up off their butts.
Some ghettos may burn. Let them burn. Then they can roll up their sleeves and rebuild.
And, if you don’t care to use the word “nigger”, that’s fine. Don’t.
And if that is a word you choose to use I will not break bread with you
"I weep for you," the Walrus said:
"I deeply sympathize."
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes
"O N****rs," said the Carpenter,
"You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?'
But answer came there none--
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one.
If you know what I know I can guarantee there has never been a war on drugs.
It’s a war on the money of drugs.
The money made on drugs is laundered by pretty much all the major banks all over the world. All that money has to be made legit somehow. Drugs will never be legal in mu opinion because too many powerful people are making too much money.
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