Krugman offers some background on whether the War on Poverty was/is a failure. Spoiler alert: no, it wasn’t:
The narrative in the 1970s was that the war on poverty had failed because of social disintegration: government attempts to help the poor were outpaced by the collapse of the family, rising crime, and so on. And on the right, and to some extent in the center, it was often argued that government aid was if anything promoting this social disintegration. Poverty was therefore a problem of values and social cohesion, not money.
Again, broken record-ish, Republicans will not commit to helping people by giving them money because of moral hazard arguments they do not apply on any other level. Inequality continues to be the source of many evils; meanwhile, so many people cannot see through the haze of their own advantages to see fit to extend them to anyone that doesn’t already have them.
Better rich people, please.
Image: 30 Days of Gratitude – Day 15, via Wikimedia Commons.