The Colossal Government Failure: "War on Poverty"
In 1969, the US spent "only" 12.9% of GDP for social welfare, and it was proposed that the federal government initiate the "war on poverty" because 12.1% of the American population was officially "below the poverty level". Never mind that at the time the US had the undisputed highest per capita income in the world, which meant that those living below the government's quixotic "poverty level" were already living better than most of the rest of the world. Never mind that this federal government has never "won" any of these social engineering "wars" in its entire existence, which meant that this war was doomed to failure right from the outset. Never mind that no economist in his right mind would admit that taking wealth from the population and filtering it through a central government can EVER increase that wealth, which is what must do to win a "war on poverty". Never mind that our Forefathers were diametrically opposed to the federal government's involvement in social engineering. We needed a "war", period, so the federal government was going to wage a war against poverty--and against the taxpayer.
What have been the results? What has been the ROI on this "war on poverty" now that we've spent more money for "welfare" than the stock market value of every stock of every Fortune 500 Corporation and each acre of US farm land, combined? Well, by 1993, we had managed to almost double social welfare expenditures to 21.1% of GDP, so certainly somebody must have benefitted from this "war". You can't spend a fifth of the GDP of the once-wealthiest country in the world and not accomplish something with it, can you? At the very least, you would expect that government which is so expert with statistics and has so many resources for propaganda to at least be able to say:
"We reduced the blah blah rate by blah blah percent!"
Well, blah, blah, blah. It can't say that. It didn't say that. It quietly published its 1993 poverty level figures in an abstract which 99% plus of the population hasn't ever seen, and the mainstream media supported this strategy by quietly ignoring that, lo and behold, the percentage of Americans "living below the poverty level" had actually INCREASED.
When Clinton held up the Welfare Queen as "the real hero of this country" (thus ignoring the war veterans he openly despised) he was doing a great job of concealing the fact that this "war on poverty" was lost at the gate. This quixotic poverty level had not just increased, it had reached an almost record high of 15.1%, even higher than it was in 1966 (at 14.7%). Thus the ultimate contribution of this "war on poverty" to our culture was to increase its level of poverty.
http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/statab/sec12.pdf
1969 |
1993 |
Increase |
|
Percent Below Poverty level |
12.10% |
15.10% |
3.00% |
Welfare Costs As Percent of GDP |
12.90% |
21.10% |
8.20% |
factor |
2.7 |
Most readers of this missive don't understand that a government agency which spends ever more money in parallel with increasing the magnitude of the problem it is "resolving" is considered by bureaucrats to be the ultimate SUCCESS story. Most don't realize that the only time a government bureaucracy can be assured of ever more taxpayers' money is when it can assure that the problem can't be resolved without ever more taxpayers' money, which is the only way bureaucrats, politicians, and judges can be happy. Welfare is the perfect scam, because the ones who define "poverty level", who are the ones who control the statistics, who are the ones with a license to spend what they want to spend, and who are the ones no politician in his right mind would ever challenge (who wants to starve little children in the street by cutting off this vital life line to the super teat, right?), are also the only beneficiary of this scam.
What's even more amazing about this welfare scam than the fact that it now costs more than a trillion dollars per year--plus another $trillion for social security--is the pitiful amount which the actual welfare recipient receives. In an economy where the median GDP per Worker is $68,000, AFDC works out to only $1,813 per recipient per year, hardly enough to justify marrying the government for the rest of your life. Even worse, food stamps are only $926 per recipient per year, the school lunch program is only $300, WIC (Women, Infants, & Children) is only $481, school breakfasts are only $174, nutrition programs for the elderly are only $200, low-income energy assistance is only $257 per year. Even high profile education programs like the Pell Grants are only $1,262 per recipient, and Stafford Loans are only $1,107, which barely put a dent in the $30,000 per year which it now costs to go to many colleges.
As if that's not bad enough, government involvement has swamped veteran's health care to the point that veterans represent only 2% of the recipients of government sponsored medical care, which suggests that either veterans are being short-changed or government expenditures for medicine are as out of control as all other welfare. Or both.
The Republican "Contract With America" contained some powerful, and alluring, statements about reducing welfare, and the mainstream media obediently conveyed the message that Republicans have finally curbed our out of control welfare expenditures. Well, the 2000 version of the Statistical Abstract of the United States contains just enough information to discredit that assumption. While "Social Welfare Expenditures" for years after 1995 are conveniently omitted, the figures that are presented for 1980 to 1995 reveal that this government is conducting business as usual. Future welfare moms can now breathe a sigh of relief, and continue to have children out of wedlock, because all of the hooplah about curbing expenditures is JUST NOT TRUE. Between 1992 and 1995 (after they took control of Congress), these expenditures jumped by a whopping 43.5%, a time during which the economy took a nose dive. Even worse, tables from the Bureau of Economic Analysis as well as total government spending per the Statistical Abstract exposes that the dynamic growth curve of government spending reveals nary a twinge of doubt about its "success" in "fighting poverty".
http://www.bea.doc.gov/bea/dn/nipaweb/TableViewFixed.asp
Modified Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Copyright @ 2007 by Fathers' Manifesto & Christian Party