Easy peasy? Really? You should look around at what real life is for
many people.
Fentanyl, meth and a lousy home and education system aren't my problem.
They're a progressive, societal problem that needs real law enforcement,
all the way up and down the line, to solve. You game?
Our society started to rot right after you and I left high school.
That's what happens when you have multiple welfare generations in a
row. I see this in action, especially in the impoverished area where I
live. I blame LBJ's great society program for starting this mess.
Reducing poverty... Not really -- Why work when it's all handed to
you on a platter?
You're blaming Lyndon B. Johnson for how things are in 2024? That's a
stretch.
Jill
The inequities and self-flagellation of his "Great Society" program are
as relevant to our decline as FDR's 3 terms of statist socialism were.
https://www.marketplace.org/2024/10/02/how-the-relationship-between-government-and-economy-has-changed-since-the-great-society/
Over the past year, in a series called “Breaking Ground,” “Marketplace”
has explored how the Biden administration — through industrial policy
efforts such as the Inflation Reduction Act, the Bipartisan
Infrastructure Law and the Chips Act — has worked to change the
relationship between the government and the economy once again.
“Joe Biden, like Lyndon Johnson, understood government. He understood
power. He understood the way that legislation gets passed,” said Mark
Updegrove, President and CEO of the LBJ Foundation. “But Joe Biden has
more many more limitations.”
https://reason.com/video/2020/01/16/the-failure-of-lbjs-great-society-and-what-it-means-for-the-21st-century/
In Great Society: A New History, Amity Shlaes argues that Lyndon
Johnson's bold makeover of the government was a massive failure despite
the good intentions of its architects and implementers.
https://nationalcenter.org/ncppr/2014/01/08/lbjs-war-on-poverty-hurt-black-americans/
Five Decades After: Black Progress Hurt by Expansion in Government, Welfare
Black Activists Criticize Handout Mentality that Destroyed Traditional
Families
Washington, D.C. – Fifty years ago today, before a joint session of
Congress, President Lyndon Baines Johnson announced an “unconditional
war on poverty in America.” Today, black activists with the Project 21
leadership network are critical of how that war has been waged. They
note the expansion of government and a strategy focused on handouts that
discourage self-improvement caused more harm than help to the poor.
green_sm
“Five decades after President Johnson initiated the ‘war’ on poverty,
America remains at around the same percentage of people still living in
poverty as it did back then. In 1964, the poverty rate was approximately
19 percent. Today, it’s around 15 percent,” said Project 21 spokesman
Derryck Green. “Statistics such as these demonstrate the War on Poverty
was a continually-mismanaged disaster. That isn’t to say there haven’t
been people helped by it. All things considered, however, it’s been a
tragedy.”
Green added: “The disastrous effects of the government’s management of
anti-poverty initiatives are recognizable across racial lines, but the
destruction is particularly evident in the black community. It
effectively subsidized the dissolution of the black family by rendering
the black man’s role as a husband and a father irrelevant, invisible and
— more specifically — disposable. The result has been several
generations of blacks born into broken homes and broken communities
experiencing social, moral and economic chaos. It fosters an inescapable
dependency that primarily, and oftentimes solely, relies on government
to sustain livelihoods.”
Federal programs directly resulting from the War on Poverty include
Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, food stamps and enhanced Social Security
benefits. At the time, President Johnson boasted, “[t]he richest nation
on Earth can afford to win it.” In 1988, President Ronald Reagan noted
in his 1988 State of the Union Address that “we waged a war on poverty,
and poverty won.” President George H.W. Bush, in his own 1992 State of
the Union Address, pointed out: “Welfare was never meant to be a
lifestyle; it was never meant to be a habit; it was never supposed to be
passed on from generation to generation like a legacy.” Bush’s comment
echoed a statement by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who, long before
the War on Poverty even began, warned government assistance could be
like a “narcotic.”
lebon_smCommenting on the potential debilitating effects of public
assistance, Project 21 Co-Chairman Cherylyn Harley LeBon said: “Although
they were conceived with good intentions, the programs of the War on
Poverty have ultimately had a negative impact on the lives of black
Americans. Even Franklin Roosevelt warned that the welfare state ‘must
not become a narcotic and a subtle destroyer of the spirit.'”
LeBon continued: “While some good things did come out of the 1960s, many
of these programs — including Head Start — have become ineffective and,
some argue, damaging over time. In fact, some of the major disasters
plaguing minority communities — including drugs, higher incarceration
rates and a rise in unwed mothers — couldn’t have just coincidentally
began escalating at the same time. At this point, when we can reflect
upon what has happened and what is needed, we should now support and
expand policies encouraging small business expansion, improving
educational opportunities, and strengthening faith and families.”
hudson_smProject 21’s Jerome Hudson said: “Lyndon Johnson’s War on
Poverty produced a reality that is horrifyingly different than the one
he probably hoped for. Instead of providing a mere safety net for
families in need, it effectively replaced the virtues of work and
self-reliance with an avalanche of welfare programs nuturing the poor.
These welfare programs foster defeatism, disincentivize two-parent homes
and set ablaze an American underclass now seemingly trapped in a
never-ending cycle of poverty.”
cooper_sm“Fifty years ago, America began the War on Poverty,” said
Project 21 Co-Chairman Horace Cooper. “Having spent trillions with
little to show for it, it’s clearly time to declare a cease fire. After
destroying generations of blacks and all but destroying the black family
in total, it is time to try empowerment and personal responsibility.”
arps_sm“The War on Poverty has arguably destroyed the black nuclear
family,” said Project 21’s Christopher Arps. “Roughly 75 percent of
black children were born to a married two-parent family when the ‘war’
began in 1964. By 2008, the percentage of black babies born out of
wedlock numbered over 72 percent. Today, the rate of unwed motherhood in
the black community is more than twice as high as among whites — and
almost three times higher than before big government’s grand
intervention. And all this comes at a steep financial cost. The federal
government has spent an estimated $15 trillion dollars to end poverty.
Government reportedly spent $20,610 on every poor individual and $61,830
per poor family in 2012.”
As the 50th anniversary of the War on Poverty is observed, it appears
the Obama Administration is effectively doubling down on some of the
very concepts of which Project 21 members are critical, including
raising the minimum wage, extending unemployment benefits and food stamp
enrollment as well as fostering class warfare by focusing on alleged
income inequality.
butler_sm“President Johnson’s War on Poverty, which was being formulated
during the Kennedy Administration, is perhaps the only government
institution that destroyed and devastated the black American upward
mobility and family structure. As an assistant secretary of labor,
Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned that the premise and concept of the War
on Poverty would be detrimental to black America,” said Project 21’s
Charles Butler. “The infamous split between the races that Moynihan
predicted has created a deficit between white and black in key areas
such as education, income and net worth. Yet we keep doing the same
thing repeatedly hoping for a different result.”
Project 21, a leading voice of black conservatives for over two decades,
is sponsored by the National Center for Public Policy Research
(https://nationalcenter.org).