... I have
called for a national war on poverty. Our objective: total victory.
...And in
the future, as in the past, this investment will return its cost many fold to
our entire economy.
...The new
program I propose is within our means. Its cost of 970 million dollars
...And this
program is much more than a beginning. Rather it is a commitment. It is a total
commitment by this President, and this Congress, and this nation, to pursue
victory over the most ancient of mankind's enemies.
Let us
look at the results of this grand experiment.
- Between 1965 and 2000, welfare spending cost taxpayers
over $8 trillion (in constant 1999 dollars) -- Johnson's estimate of $970
million, not withstanding.
- From the start of the "Great Society" in 1964
to 1972, families on welfare tripled (approximately 1 million to 3 million).
As a showing of appreciation to Johnson for this wonderful job, there was
massive and bloody rioting in the ghettos of American cities, peaking in
1967.
- Out-of-Wedlock births for African-Americans, driven by
welfare system rules, has grown from around 20% in the early '60s to nearly
70% in the '90s.
- The total state and federal annual spending for welfare
programs has grown from approximately $40 billion in 1960 to $450 billion in
2000 and continues to increase in spite of the so-called "ending of
welfare as we know it" legislation of 1996.
- From 1960 to 2000, the crime rate has tripled and the
incarceration rate has increased by nearly 400 percent (another form of
welfare?) -- see Charles Murray's "The
Underclass Revisited".
- At the start of the National School Lunch Program in
1946, there were approximately 7.1 million students that participated. By
1997 there were nearly 27 million participants in spite of an enormous
increase in the economic well being of the country during that time (source,
USDA
"School Lunch Program - Fact Sheets"). Sadly, grades,
nevertheless, went down.
The
above comes to you from http://www.magnolia.net/~leonf/politics/poorlogic-a.html
The
reasonable conclusion from these events is that the attempt to engineer the end
of poverty with Federal poverty programs was in fact misconceived, unnecessary,
and tragically counterproductive.
http://www.friesian.com/stats.htm
How
can these results be in the public interest?
If
not the public interest, whose interest did all that money serve?
