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.
One might, therefore, plausibly argue that we have in fact "won" the war on poverty, in the sense that even our poorest people are immeasurably rich by the standards of most of the world's poor.
If one defines "victory" by a count of Americans who are actually poor by material standards, the War on Poverty has been a great success.
Mr. Browning nevertheless states that we have not "won," and actually he's correct ... but for perhaps the wrong reasons.
A useful metaphor for the current state of the War on Poverty is that of a person on life support. The body can in most cases be kept alive indefinitely, but will die when the machines are unplugged. That's where things stand now, with welfare -- take away the welfare, and true poverty will once again be among us.
Mr. Browning merely hints at the reasons why we are not winning the War on Poverty -- it's not a matter of material support; if it were only that, we are clearly victorious.
The fact is, however, that our difficulties in the War on Poverty are cultural, not material. Just like the person on life support, the person on welfare must sink or swim on her own, once the support is removed -- and our current culture does not insist on people carrying their own weight.
It's not that the cultural battle has been lost, precisely... it's that the cultural battle has barely been contested at all. There are a LOT of reasons for that, and fighting that battle would be very difficult.
But if we really want to win the War on Poverty, we have to open an offensive on the Cultural front.