Government makes most things worse.
Lyndon Johnson launched a War on Poverty; Richard Nixon a War on Drugs.
Both had good intentions, but their “wars” do more harm than good.
I believed the War on Poverty would lift people out of poverty.
At the time I was a naive Princeton student who believed my professors when they said, “It’s wrong that in this rich country, people are poor, so government should fix that. Targeted programs will lift people out of poverty.”
Have they?
We’ve spent more than $30 trillion so far. Some people were helped.
When welfare began, the poverty rate dropped … dropped for seven years.
But then progress stopped. Since the 1970s, the number of Americans living in poverty rose and fell, but the initial success hasn’t repeated.
That’s because the handouts encourage people to become dependent. Welfare even…
