We waged a war on poverty and poverty won."
The dust has settled and the evidence is in: The 1960s Great Society and War on Poverty programs of President Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) have been a colossal and giant failure. One might make the argument that social welfare programs are the moral path for a modern government. They cannot however make the argument that these are in any way effective at alleviating poverty.
In fact there is evidence that such aggressive programs might make generational poverty worse. While the notion of a culture of dependence" is a bit of a clich in conservative circles there is evidence that this is indeed the case that consciously or not the welfare state creates a culture where people receive benefits rather than seeking gainful employment or business ownership.
This is not a moral or even a value judgment against the people engaged in such a culture. Again the claim is not that people choose to be on welfare" but simply that social welfare programs incentivize poverty which has an
impact on communities that has nothing to do with individual intent.
We are now over 50 years into the development of the Great Society and the War on Poverty. It is time to take stock in these programs from an objective and evidence-based perspective. When one does that it is not only clear that the programs have been a failure but also that they have disproportionately impacted the black community in the United States. The current state of dysfunction in the black community (astronomically high crime rates very low rates of home ownership and single motherhood as the norm) are
not the natural state of the black community in the United States but closely tied to the role that social welfare programs play. Or as
Dr. Thomas Sowell stated:
If we wanted to be serious about evidence we might compare where blacks stood a hundred years after the end of slavery with where they stood after 30 years of the liberal welfare state. In other words we could compare hard evidence on the legacy of slavery" with hard evidence on the legacy of liberals."
Heres a peek into how black America has been a victim of LBJs Great Society and War on Poverty. Continue reading
Black America Before LBJ: How the Welfare State Inadvertently Helped Ruin Black Communities at
Ammo.com.
