Our Trillion-Dollar War...... (A complete failure, a bleak picture of accomplishments)

Intellectual Conservative ^ | September 10, 2008 | Edgar K. Browning

[IrishMike]

Put away the baseball bats, read the article.

[Harry Wurzbach]

Exactly. How is a cool tril a year not enough to eliminate “poverty” as we know it in this country? Nevermind that virtually all poor people in this country seem to have a roof over their heads with central air and heat, a tv, etc... Plus poor kids have a chance to go to a public school, which even if it isn’t that great, offers them a chance to work their way out of poverty and into the middle class, provided they are willing to work hard.

[logician2u]

I did and it confirms what I've always believed: you can't fight a "war" against a non-entity, whether it's poverty, crime, terrorism, drugs, whatever. OK, you can declare -- through presidential proclamation, since Congress hasn't been involved since 1941 -- war on these things, but you'd be hard-pressed to ever declare victory.

That's the problem. Once begun, the war continues indefinitely, or until the nation becomes bankrupt as a result.

[Wolfie]

Clearly the way to get ahead is to get yourself on the other side of one of these “Transfers of Wealth”, either as a contractor or impoverished soul.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

I guessed the subject of the article from the title.

There was a disturbance in the Force.

[RC2]

You will never get rid of poverty....no matter how much you spend. Poverty has been around since the beginning of time and will remain. Throw all the money you want at it and it will always be there as long as people get a hand out. We throw money at abortion but there are some in the inner city that use abortion as birth control and the tax payer pays for it. We throw money at lunch programs for kids when it’s the parents that should be feeding the kids. Even at that, the schools throw tons of food away because the kids won’t eat it. We need to rethink all of our tax programs and get rid of the give aways.

[Mr. K]

"In 2005, $620 billion was spent ..."

if you figure the lowest 10% of the population is 'poor' then that is equal to about $24,000 for every PERSON

or...almost $100,000 for a family of 4

we have the wealthiest POOR people in the world.

[KriegerGeist]

One of Rush's "undeniable truths of life": Whatever you subsidize you will get more of.

You subsidize dairy and you get warehouses full of milk, butter and cheese.

You subsidize grains (corn, soybeans, wheat, etc.) and you get rotting mountains of it.

The list could go on.

[Realism]

What do we get for it?

Less beggars, Less homeless, Less abandoned children, Less crime, Lower unemployment figures, People live longer, healthier, and educated. Higher drug dependency (legal, and illegal.

[servantoftheservant]

27K per year per poor person? It’s a shame NO ONE in this country knows this.

I have family members that work very hard for less than this per year.

[the_devils_advocate_666]

we have the wealthiest POOR people in the world

I like say "we have the fattest POOR people in the world!"

[traviskicks]

ping

[servantoftheservant]

Less beggars, Less homeless, Less abandoned children, Less crime, Lower unemployment figures, People live longer, healthier, and educated. Higher drug dependency (legal, and illegal.

Read the article:

Is the low-income population more independent and self-supporting than before the War on Poverty?

Has the trillion-dollar expenditure eliminated poverty in America? Reduced it dramatically?

Has the trillion-dollar expenditure reduced inequality? Are the egalitarians grateful to the American people for their sacrifices in this area, or are they continually carping about increasing inequality?

Are more disadvantaged children being raised in stable two-parent families today than before the War on Poverty?

Are the children in low-income families getting good educations that prepare them for productive lives as adults? Have the racial gaps in educational achievement been eliminated or greatly narrowed?

Has illegitimacy been reduced in the low-income population?

Is crime lower today than in the 1950s, before the War on Poverty?

[Steel Wolf]

There aren't any poor people in the United States. You want to see poor, you need to come overseas. I'll show you some poor people. People with no hope of education, no hope of working their way up. I'm angered and quite frankly embarrassed when Americans complain about their standards of living. We have it so good, that even the poorest among us is blessed to live in the U.S.

Americans would be shocked cold if they realized how bad much of the world has it. Could we do better? Sure. But this constant harping over 'the poor and the middle class' in America is appalling. It's raw envy, and the instigation of envy, and no matter how good things get, people will always want more.

[traviskicks]

Some charts on welfare and the difference after ‘welfare reform:

http://www.neoperspectives.com/summary.htm

[Condor51]

Edgar K. Browning hates Black people.

[Citizen Blade]

But low-income persons receive benefits from other government programs that are not designated as welfare programs. Most notably, they receive benefits from Social Security, Medicare, and the public school system.

He's using the cost of these programs to increase the his numbers for the cost of the war on poverty. But social security and public schools are available to anyone, not just the poor. Using this logic, you could include part of the cost of paying for the military into the cost of the war on poverty, since the military also protects the poor from foreign invasion.

[syriacus]

There's a great book on one part of this topic.

America’s Trillion-Dollar Housing Mistake The Failure of American Housing Policy

For more than seven decades, American government has acted to provide housing for the poor. In America’s Trillion-Dollar Housing Mistake, Howard Husock explains how, as with so many anti-poverty efforts, low-income housing programs have harmed those they were meant to help while causing grave collateral damage to cities and their citizens. Public housing projects, Mr. Husock writes, are only the best-known housing policy mistakes.

[traviskicks]

There aren't any poor people in the United States.

Well, the government tells us there are, shouldn't we believe them? /s

http://www.neoperspectives.com/the_poor.htm

[Blood of Tyrants]

If a trillion dollars were simply given to those counted as poor by the federal government (37 million in 2005), it would amount to $27,000 per person. That’s $81,000 for a family of three,

Wow.