Has the War on Poverty been a failure? Well, of course it has. If you devote 50 years and $21.5 trillion (in 4Q2013 dollars) to anything, and people are arguing about whether it was a success or a failure, then you can be sure that it was a failure. Have you noticed that, 50+ years from its inception, no one is suggesting that the Apollo program was a failure? The Apollo program was an unchallenged success because it accomplished its stated goal: “…to land a man on the moon, and to return him safely to the earth.” The stated goal of the War on Poverty, as enunciated by Lyndon Johnson on January 8, 1964, was, “…not only to relieve the symptom of poverty, but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it.” Measured against this objective, the War on Poverty has not just been a failure, it has been a catastrophe. It was supposed to help America’s poor become self-sufficient, and it has made them dependent and dysfunctional. This is fact is illustrated most vividly by the “Anchored Supplemental Poverty Measure Before Taxes and Transfers*” (ASPMBTAT). This metric was devised to assess the ability of people to earn enough, not counting taxes and subsidies, to keep themselves and their dependent children out of poverty. The income required to do this varies by family size and composition, but, for a family comprising two adults and two children, it is $25,500/year (in 4Q2013 dollars). The ASPMBTAT is the ultimate quantitative test… Click below to read the full story from Forbes
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The War on Poverty Wasn’t A Failure –
