The road to hell paving company

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

On this date in 1964 President Johnson declared a “War on Poverty”.

At the time of Johnson’s speech, the poverty rate in this country stood at about 19%. Poverty rates had been falling steadily since at least 1959 which was the first year there was a real statistic. At that time, most people agreed that poverty had been falling steadily since 1930. During the depression it is estimated the number of people living below the poverty rate reached 50%. We would have to attribute this decline in poverty to our basic economic system since there were virtually no government anti-poverty programs in place before President Johnson’s great initiative.

In fact, the poverty rate had been declining at almost 1% a year for the five years leading up to the President Johnson’s declaration of war.  From 1964 until 1970 the poverty rate declined further from the 19% to the historic low of about 13%. This was a little better than 1% a year. In other words, the poverty rate declined at about the same rate from 1959 until 1970. If we want to be fair we can say the rate of decline increased slightly after Johnson’s speech and we can even give the credit to the massive new anti-poverty program that was part of the president’s “war”.

But a funny thing happened after 1970, the poverty rate actually went up. The rate increased to 15% at the end of the recession in the early 80’s. Since then, the poverty rate has mostly hovered around 13-15% for the next 30 years and today stands at about 15.6% (the highest rate in over 40 years). This level of poverty has been constant whether Republican or Democrat leaders and both have largely maintained and expanded the federal programs of welfare, food stamps, head start, unemployment insurance, disability insurance and over 100 other programs designed to address poverty and its causes.

Despite the trillions of dollars spent on hundreds of federal government anti-poverty programs, the amount of people in this country living below the government defined poverty line remains about the same or even worse since at this date in time we are at a 40 year high

But it might be worse.  Remember before the “war on poverty”? When the poverty rate had steadily been declining?  What changed?  Our economic system that had been producing a steadily decreasing rate of poverty has only become stronger.  The number of jobs and our country’s level of efficiency have increased dramatically. The big difference between then - when the poverty rate was falling and now - when it has leveled out is the federal government programs.  You would have to be crazy to not at least consider that these programs have hurt people’s ability to get out of poverty.

It may be in a country this large that some percent will always live in poverty and maybe that percentage is where we are now.  But one absolute fact is that the almost $1,000,000,000.00 (one billion dollars) a year we spend to eradicate poverty is having no effect. And yet whenever anyone talks about changing, eliminating or modifying any entitlement program, the progressives absolutely explode. (Witness the recent debate on continuing unemployment benefits to pay for up to two years.)

For some reason the people in Washington think that if we keep doing the same thing over and over we will eventually get different results.

But what did I say about being crazy.