2 ms·

We had a federal war on poverty, starting with the Johnson administration and ending when Bill Clinton gutted the federal welfare program in 1996. Hell it even

• Aloha 10y ago
  Had we taken the money we spent on the war on poverty and just given it out to the poor, with a inexpensive financial literacy and education program to go along with it, we could have actually solved most poverty. Most poor people just need a little bit of a leg up to get them out of the hole, and then are able to crawl the rest of the way out and better themselves without much additional help, often within the same generation. Instead we formed an endless number of programs, targeted at specific regions, minorities and groups, with an seemingly endless number of bureaucrats to run them, and we end up only one or two pegs ahead of where we started. I just try to imagine how far we would be had we instituted a minimum income in 1975. The current political climate is because of perceived government overreach (real or imagined) - where the overreach comes from however depends on your political stripe (the right blames environmental and regulatory issues, the left, the national security circus/military-industrial complex) in the end the people are tired, and the attitude of the country has seemingly shifted (if even only perhaps temporarily), people want a return to normalcy, so I fear for a generation or so more, the chance may be lost.