Poverty Up 30%, 50 Years After LBJ’s “War on Poverty” Declared
Posted By Philip Hodges on Jun 6, 2014 | 11 Comments
In 1964, Lyndon “Civil Rights” Johnson, the same guy who declared he’d have “them ni**ers voting Democratic for the next 200 years,” also declared “war on poverty.” He declared it when the poverty rate was already going down. It was at 19%, down from over 22% in 1959. He stated in 1964:
“We have declared unconditional war on poverty. Our objective is total victory. I believe that 30 years from now Americans will look back upon these 1960s as the time of the great American Breakthrough toward the victory of prosperity over poverty.”
The war on poverty was supposed to eradicate poverty and produce a “Great Society,” a society that John Lennon dreamed about in his “Imagine” song: no possessions, no nations, no religion. A society dependent on government welfare and social programs and that looked up affectionately to the government as a protective and compassionate “big brother.” A society where everybody was “equal.” No one would be more successful than another, and there would be no incentive for class envy and greed. Of course, in that kind of society, there would be no incentive to succeed in the first place.
Government programs over the last several decades have only made people poorer and have been incrementally destroying the middle class by overtaxing and overregulating them. All that will be left are 2 classes: the super rich and the super poor, similar to the lord and the serfs in a manorial society.
CNS News pointed to a House Budget Committee Report that showed how much the U.S. government spent in 2012 alone on this war on poverty:
According to a House Budget Committee Report, the federal government spent $799 billion on 92 programs to combat poverty: $100 billion on food aid; $200 billion spent on cash aid; $90 billion on education and job training; $300 billion on health care; and $50 billion on housing, in fiscal year 2012 alone.
Ever since this war on poverty was declared 50 years ago, the U.S. has spent over $15 trillion on government programs to make sure the poor have their “fair share.” And what do we have to show for it? The House Budget Committee Report showed that when considering all ages, the poverty rate has gone down 2.3 percentage points, from 17.3% in 1965 to about 15% today. In terms of raw numbers, that’s about 36 million in poverty in 1964 and about 46.5 million in poverty today.
But when considering adults aged 18 to 64, the poverty rate has increased substantially:
According to the Census, there were 26,497,000, or 13.7% of 18- to 64-year olds, living below the poverty level in 2012. In 1966, the same age group reported 10.5% — 11,007,000 people out of 105,241,000 – living below the poverty level.
This means that since 1966 the percentage of 18- to 64-year olds living in poverty has increased 30.5% — from 10.5% to 13.7%. The Census did not report data for this age group in years 1965 and 1964.
This is of course all by design. The government doesn’t care about poor people. They care about making as many people as possible dependent on them for survival. And when some people get a taste of that government security, they’ll keep voting for more and more of it. Hence, LBJ’s comments about having blacks vote Democrat for years to come. He knew what he was doing.
Read more at
http://lastresistance.com/6016/poverty-30-50-years-lbjs-war-poverty-declared/#27mBZJBxubYpSAMd.99
