Hard to believe we have just passed the 50th anniversary of the war on poverty declared by Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1964, just six weeks after he ascended to the presidency following the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Many have asserted that LBJ was only able to achieve the profound reforms in this war on a wave of JFK martyrdom, and that his broad and sweeping “great society” agenda exceeded anything JFK planned in his “new frontier.” Like everything else with JFK, we are left to wonder and speculate, but the political environment was certainly ripe for this war, just as it was for Barack Obama’s agenda following the financial collapse in 2008.
In his first State of the Union Address on January 8, 1964, LBJ proclaimed “This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America,” and that “we shall not rest until that war is won.” The years following that announcement would see the creation of Medicaid, Medicare and at least a dozen other federal programs to transfer wealth to poor Americans – ballooning to the current 126 federal anti-poverty programs.
You would think that poverty had become a pressing issue when LBJ declared war on it. But in fact, the poverty rate was in decline – by 1965, it had already dropped significantly (3%, to be precise) over a six year period. Yes, the poverty rate was falling until the government got involved in a major way, at which point progress actually stalled or stagnated. From about the time LBJ’s reforms were fully implemented near the end of his administration in 1969 until now, the poverty rate has remained roughly the same.
We have spent about $15,000,000,000,000 since LBJ’s inauguration for these results:
Year Poverty Rate
1959 22.1
1969 13.7
1979 12.4
1989 13.1
2009 14.3
Now, the anti-poverty programs have not been a complete failure in that they have elevated the living standard of poor people in America. It would almost be impossible not to achieve that minimal goal when throwing so many trillions at the problem, but any honest assessment of the war must acknowledge these gains. Being poor in America in 2014 is much different than being poor in America in 1964, or for that matter being poor in 2014 in most of the rest of the world. As the Wall St. Journal’s Robert Rector reports, “the typical American living below the poverty level in 2013 lives in a house or apartment that is in good repair, equipped with air conditioning and cable TV. His home is larger than the home of the average non-poor French, German or English man. He has a car, multiple color TVs and a DVD player. More than half the poor have computers and a third have wide, flat-screen TVs. The overwhelming majority of poor Americans are not undernourished and did not suffer from hunger for even one day of the previous year.”
That so much human suffering from real hunger, malnutrition and destitution has been reduced or eliminated is no small thing. But that hardly means we should fail to consider whether $15,000,000,000,000 of taxpayers’ money has been well spent, or that anything near that amount should have been spent in the first place.
The two most devastating of the myriad unintended consequences of the war have been the accumulation of frightening levels of debt and even more importantly, the destruction of the American family.
The $15,000,000,000,000 in hard money spent on the war is actually a pittance compared to the roughly $100,000,000,000,000 in unfunded liabilities, future debt we have no way to pay, accumulated in the Medicare program alone. Typical of government programs, Medicare was passed with the promise of being self-sustaining, and instead has saddled future generations with crippling levels of debt.
The profound damage to the American family can effectively be illustrated by a single fact: seven times as many babies are born out of wedlock today as when the war began. This has been such an obvious and deep societal issue that something almost unimaginable happened in 1996: a Democratic president signed the repeal of the signature federal welfare program, AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children).
Still, the beat goes on. Only the government could actually ramp up spending so dramatically on a war that has not come close to achieving its objectives. In 1965, we spent about 2% of the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) on various welfare programs at the federal, state and local levels. Today, we have tripled that spending to about 6% of GDP, with no actual reduction in poverty to show for it.
Johnson’s utopian dream that people given educational opportunities and economic handouts would elevate themselves out of poverty has long since become the symbol of progressive futility. Yes, our poor are better off simply because they get that government check. The check gets them decent nutrition and flatscreens, but this is the heart of the matter: a government check does not, cannot, and never will raise them out of poverty. Only the poor themselves can do that by working very hard like everyone else, and even then we know nothing is guaranteed.
Sadly, our programs enacted at great cost haven’t really helped them at all to elevate themselves. We’re giving away tons of fish, but providing no fishing lessons. Cato Institute analyst Michael Tanner asserts, “we actually have a pretty solid idea of the keys to getting out of and staying out of poverty: (1) finish school; (2) do not get pregnant outside marriage; and (3) get a job, any job, and stick with it,” but that ”the vast majority of current programs are focused on making poverty more comfortable … rather than giving people the tools that will help them escape poverty.”
Of course, if people are indeed elevated out of poverty, they won’t need any help from the government. The professional poverty pimps will do anything to keep that from happening. We all know about the celebrity examples like Jesse and Al, but with so much money spent, the hands taking their cut before it gets to those in need are many. Again to Mr. Tanner, “the political power necessary to transfer income to the poor is power that can be used to transfer income to the non-poor, and the non-poor are usually better organized politically and more capable of using political power to achieve their purposes.” Since Obama’s inauguration, federal welfare spending has increased by 41% – more than $193,000,000,000 per year.
This 50 year old war on poverty, just like the 40 year old war on drugs, involves massive spending and negligible results coupled with colossal levels of waste, fraud, abuse, and disincentives for productivity, and everyone knows it. But little or nothing is done, because to oppose any federal welfare program is to prove yourself inhumane in this PC world. In any universe other than government, people engaged in huge spending demand huge results. Not so with government programs, which are perpetuated not because they work, but because they are, as Ronald Reagan so eloquently described them, “the nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth.”
