In his State of the Union address on Wednesday, January 8, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a “War on Poverty” as a part of his “Great Society”.
Johnson believed in expanding the federal government’s roles in education and health care as poverty reduction strategies. Johnson stated “Our aim is not only to relieve the symptom of poverty, but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it”. He believed that all it would take was the right government programs, and, (of course), a massive amount of Federal dollars).
The speech led the United States Congress to pass the Economic Opportunity Act, which established the Office of Economic Opportunity, (OEO) to administer the local application of federal funds targeted against poverty. It remains in the continued existence of such federal programs as Head Start, Volunteers in Service to America, (VISTA), TRiO (education programs) , and Job Corps.
These programs were a staggering and enormously overwhelming failure. From 1950 through 1968 the poverty rate had steadily fallen by around 1 percentage point per year. In the years following the Federal “War on Poverty” the rate has stagnated. After the expenditure of over seven trillion dollars there is little, if any progress to be realized other than a removal of vast sums of tax dollars from the American economy.
One of Johnson’s programs established the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 which provided millions of Federal dollars for the education of poor children. Those large expenditures yielded no results. By 1977, a study by the National Institute of Education found that any positive effects achieved during the school year had dissipated as the students entered a new grade. They ended up just as far behind as students who had not had the benefit of the programs. This also held true for the highly touted “Head Start” early childhood learning program.
Medicare and Medicaid did little to increase the availability of medical services to the poor. What it did do was create a third-party payment system, (usually the government), that paid for services that medical professionals were previously providing “pro bono”, (voluntarily), to the poor. Medicare and Medicaid was basically a wealth distribution scheme run by the Federal government that transferred income from middle class taxpayers to middle class health-care professionals. It also had the unintended consequence of raising health-care costs across the board.
The Job Corps was conceived as a vocational training program for the unskilled. From the beginning it attempted to train a workforce that was uncooperative and unwilling to be trained. Studies showed that those who completed the programs had no better success in the job market than those who were untrained. Two thirds of those who signed up for the free vocational training did not bother to finish the program, all for a cost that about equivalent to a Harvard education.
Combined with the welfare programs such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children, (later changed to Temporary Assistance to Needy Families – TANF, by President Clinton), these Federal benefits were, in fact, counterproductive.
With the government removing the social stigma of being on welfare and providing a modest, at least, economic security there was little or no incentive to find employment or to strive for family stability, (since there was negative incentive for fathers to stay with and be responsible for their children).
The dramatic expansion of Federal welfare spending combined with aggressive propagation of “Welfare Rights” takes away the pride and dignity of the working poor in knowing that they were supporting themselves and not being a burden. Now, with the guarantee of a government handout, trying to take personal responsibility seems foolish.
We have gone from a society that prided itself on a work ethic and standing on it’s own two feet to a culture of “Gimmie-Dat”. Instead of feeling pride in making their own way, we have at least three generations who are conditioned to expect that the world, (or at least Uncle Sam), owes them a living.
Oh, and what about the “War on Poverty”? It’s over… poverty won!
