Data Show That Poverty in the U.S. Was Plummeting—Until Lyndon Johnson Declared War On It fee.org/articles/pover… via @feeonline
From the WSJ:
“During the 20 years before the War on Poverty was funded, the portion of the nation living in poverty had dropped to 14.7% from 32.1%.”
“During the 20 years before the War on Poverty was funded, the portion of the nation living in poverty had dropped to 14.7% from 32.1%.”
“Since 1966, the first year with a significant increase in antipoverty spending, the poverty rate reported by the Census Bureau has been virtually unchanged…Transfers targeted to low-income families increased from an average of $3,070 per person in 1965 to $34,093 in 2016…”
“Transfers now constitute 84.2% of the disposable income of the poorest quintile of American households and 57.8% of the disposable income of lower-middle-income households. These payments also make up 27.5% of America’s total disposable income.”
“The stated goal of the War on Poverty is not just to raise living standards but also to make America’s poor more self-sufficient and to bring them into the mainstream of the economy.”
“... the war has been an abject failure, increasing dependency and largely severing the bottom 1/5 of earners from rewards and responsibilities of work…The expanding availability of antipoverty transfers has devastated the work effort of poor and lower-middle income families.”
“By 1975 the lowest-earning fifth of families had 24.8% more families with a prime-work age head and no one working than did their middle-income peers. By 2015 this differential had risen to 37.1%…”
“The War on Poverty has increased dependency and failed in its primary effort to bring poor people into the mainstream of America’s economy and communal life.”
“Government programs replaced deprivation with idleness, stifling human flourishing.”
“It happened just as President Franklin Roosevelt said it would: “The lessons of history,” he said in 1935, “show conclusively that continued dependency upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber.”
Professor Lee Ohanian of the Hoover Institute points out that the welfare state provides lots of money in ways that stifle personal initiative:
“Inequality is not an issue that policy should address… Society, however, should care about creating economic opportunities for the lowest earners… a family of four at the poverty level has about $22,300 per year of pre-tax income.”
“Consumption for that same family of four on average, however, is about $44,000 per year, which means that their consumption level is about twice as high as their income… We’re certainly providing many more resources to low-earning families today.”
“But on the other hand, we have policies in place that either limit economic opportunities for low earners or distort the incentives for those earners to achieve prosperity.”
Predictably, a columnist for the New York Times is frustrated that many low-income voters are supporting Republicans because they see how their neighbors are being harmed by dependency:
nytimes.com/2015/11/22/opi…
nytimes.com/2015/11/22/opi…
