When the War on Poverty was introduced in 1964, the U.S. poverty rate was 19 percent. Over the following decade, it dropped to 11 percent, and currently hovers around 12 percent."
1964 LBJ War on Poverty starts and poverty rate is 19%. Curently it hovers around 12% lets see ( 19 minus 12 = 7 ) sure looks like it came down a full 7% points from the 1964 numbers, and for the trillion dollar tax investment, that is sorry!
It's
$5 trillion, but who's counting?!
Anyway, my point was that in the decade after the WoP was instituted, the poverty rate fell by 8 percent. That, from any perspective, is progress. The poverty rate came fairly close to being
cut in half. So after that, it stabilized -- but at 7 to 8 percent lower than where it had been before. If a program helps a situation and then stabilizes it, but doesn't fix the situation entirely, it's still better than having no program at all. Without the WoP, presumably, we'd still be at 19 percent or higher.
If you're sick, and you take some medicine that makes you only half as sick but doesn't cure you, do you stop taking the medicine altogether? You might, if you've got some other medicine that would
completely cure you, but you can't take them both at once, and you
know the other one will work better. Do you have such a medicine, broketrash?
Anyway, none of this is taking place in a vaccuum -- any number of other factors could effect the situation, in either direction. Maybe the poverty rate would have plummeted between 1964 and 1974 anyway, even without the WoP programs. Or maybe other factors jumped into play after 1974 (stagflation maybe, or that horrible destructive Carter adminstration
) that kept it from realizing its full measure of success.
In any case, since the WoP has improved the situation but hasn't cured it, by all means let's keep looking for ways to fine-tune it or try new things.
private sector company with that kind of track record would have gone out of business a long time ago.
Why do conservatives always insist on making this comparison? OK, sure. A private-sector company that spends a bunch of money on a charitable program and doesn't at least break even goes out of business.
But government in fact ISN't a private-sector business -- the public and private sectors have different purposes. A private-sector business that spent a bunch of money on roads and bridges without any immediate payback would go out of business, too. A private-sector business that funded schools and libraries and parks and police and fire and gave tax breaks to other businesses and supported farmers and paid social security benefits and mortgage deductions and shipped food to starving people overseas and funded a war in the Middle East so on would go out of business, too. That's why we HAVE a public sector, and don't just rely on the private sector to take care of all our needs.
However, if there ARE any private-sector businesses that want to step forward and solve poverty, have at it! Who's stopping you? Know what? I'd even buy some stock and not complain too much if the stock price didn't soar up from one year to the next.
the only thing which will permanently lower the poverty rate and keep it lowered is economic opportunity for the underclass, and that will never happen as long as the gov poverty pimps have the poor by the throat.
Um, and tell me again why the two are mutually exclusive? Is it because businesses, despite all the tax breaks they do get, are nevertheless so burdened by taxes that they aren't able to offer all the economic opportunities they are just itching to provide for the poor? Or is it because businesses try and try to offer jobs to poor people, but those lazy poor people are so used to living on the dole they won't take the plentiful economic opportunities that are handed to them?