The War on Poverty: Stalemate
Pat Sajak ·
Sep 13, 2010 at 5:13pm
Current TV reports on its website that the number of people in the U.S. living in poverty is rising under the current administration and is approaching levels of the 60s that led to the War on Poverty. So, after a 45-year war and trillions of dollars spent, we’re back where we started. That’s what you get for entering a conflict without an exit strategy.
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May '10
Re: The War on Poverty: Stalemate
Meanwhile, the war on prosperity is going quite well.
Aug '10
Re: The War on Poverty: Stalemate
I'm not surprised that poverty numbers are rising, but I'm also curious: which definition of poverty are they using? The article didn't seem to say (only it seemed to suppose that the definition was the same one the census uses).
Aug '10
Re: The War on Poverty: Stalemate
Yep. When I read Obama "stressed his commitment to helping the poor achieve middle-class status", I thought to myself, well the easiest way to do that is to impoverish the middle classes.
Aug '10
Re: The War on Poverty: Stalemate
Where do these #s come from ? If they're hiding employment #s , then why inflate or be honest about this. Fall back position is a whiny community organizer network ? The radio call letters would be WCON.
Re: The War on Poverty: Stalemate
This link is a couple of years old, but it might help
Aug '10
Re: The War on Poverty: Stalemate
Pat Sajak
This link is a couple of years old, but it might help · Sep 13 at 5:27pm
Thanks. It answered my first, rough question, that they use income (rather than inventory of goods owned, child mortality, etc) as their poverty measure.
Thing is, if we hadn't had the War on Poverty in the first place, I bet the poor would be far more prosperous than they are today.
The War on Poverty has been a cruel joke at the poor's expense, relatively punishing the poor who try to develop the habits that make leaving poverty behind a reality.
Edited on Sep 13, 2010 at 5:57pmMay '10
Re: The War on Poverty: Stalemate
Well, not quite back where we started. When we started African-American families were largely intact.
May '10
Re: The War on Poverty: Stalemate
Why bother with an exit strategy when you haven't got an opening strategy nor any kind of strategy at all. The "strategy" is throw money at it and win votes. In that respect it did just fine, and in retrospect, that was probably the real goal of these programs anyway.
This "War on Poverty" was based on a false theory of poverty, that, like the Keynsian economic policies that Peter has been writing about, has never been shown effective. But it's a good way to shovel taxpayer dollars to certain people, again like the Keynsian stimulus programs.
Remember that the War on Poverty was brought to you buy the same people as the War on Vietnam. "Exit Strategy" was not their strong suit.
Jul '10
Re: The War on Poverty: Stalemate
Do these numbers include our undocumented friends?
Jul '10
Re: The War on Poverty: Stalemate
A household with fewer than two flat-screen televisions, only basic cable, and less than one cell phone per capita.
Re: The War on Poverty: Stalemate
It would be interesting to see what would have happened had we been able to take all the money spent on that "war" in just the first decade and simply give it to those below the poverty level.
May '10
Re: The War on Poverty: Stalemate
Excellent point. This War on Poverty has ended up as a "War on the Poor". This is exactly the sort of example to illustrate the falseness of the stereotyped depiction of liberal policies as "caring" and conservative policies as "hardhearted". Paul Rahe has addressed this on Ricochet this week, and Pat lampooned this attitude earlier today. It's time to push back.
M.F.R. is entirely correct that without this misguided "war", many of those not in poverty would be doing much better. A more conservative policy would have been the more compassionate approach.
Jul '10
Re: The War on Poverty: Stalemate
Or more to the point, if we had simply left that money in the hands of people who earned it.
Jun '10
Re: The War on Poverty: Stalemate
Exactly mesquito. We can't post images, so please look at the chart on this link -- Census data reflecting African-American family structure from the 1950's on-ward. It makes me want to cry that public policy could so damage people and enraged at the smug liberals that created and profit from this dysfunctionality.
Edited on Sep 13, 2010 at 6:02pmMay '10
Re: The War on Poverty: Stalemate
One of Churchill's worst broadcasts. Must've been drunk.:
"Even though large tracts of flyover country and many old and coastal States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Rethuglikkkan Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Tea Party Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail.
We shall go on to the end, we shall fight to be like France,
we shall fight to lower the seas and oceans,
we shall fight with sagging confidence and dwindling strength on the air, we shall pay off our campaign supporters, whatever the cost may be,
we shall fight with constant speeches,
we shall fight on shaky ground,
we shall fightwith ACORN field offices and riot in the streets,
we shall fight with massive bills;
we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this majority or a large part of it were subjugated and out of work, then our Financier beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the Media Elite, would carry on the struggle.
Green eggs and ham."
Jun '10
Re: The War on Poverty: Stalemate
Never underestimate the creativity of Americans. We've created something absolutely new in human history--the waddling poor.
Aug '10
Re: The War on Poverty: Stalemate
Didn't P. J O'Rourke calculate in Eat the Rich that if you took the amount of money spent on poverty programs by the Federal Government, and divided it by a generous estimate of the number of the poor, it came out to an annual salary for each over the poverty line? Problem solved!
Re: The War on Poverty: Stalemate
Kenneth
Or more to the point, if we had simply left that money in the hands of people who earned it. · Sep 13 at 5:58pm
This was, essentially, Milton Friedman's point -- that if you want to give people money, give them money. Don't create a ludicrous "war" on something that's existed for thousands of years. Don't create a federal behemoth that won't actually help anyone -- but will only make the do-gooders feel better about themselves. His idea of a guaranteed minimum income still strikes me as a zany, but intellectually honest (and maybe even effective) way to give people at the bottom rung a hand.
Re: The War on Poverty: Stalemate
Rob Long
This was, essentially, Milton Friedman's point -- that if you want to give people money, give them money. His idea of a guaranteed minimum income still strikes me as a zany, but intellectually honest (and maybe even effective) way to give people at the bottom rung a hand. · Sep 13 at 6:21pm
I've always thought of Friedman more as wacky than zany.
Jul '10
Re: The War on Poverty: Stalemate
The War on Poverty is probably the biggest jobs program ever devised.
We have social workers, administrators, housing bureaucrats, squadrons of academics and on and on.
I would bet that for each ten people "living in poverty" there is at least one government worker or academic living quite nicely off of poverty.
And they all vote. As do their hapless wards.