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LBJ’s War on Poverty: America’s Longest War
“The vast majority of current programs are focused on making poverty more comfortable — giving poor people more food, better shelter, health care, and so forth — rather than giving people the tools that will help them escape poverty.” Matt Cover: CNSNEWS.com
America’s longest running war is nearly in its fifty-fifth year: LBJ’s War on Poverty. The war on poverty has outlasted the Vietnam war, The Gulf wars, and the ongoing war in Afghanistan all combined. The cost of LBJ’s war on poverty is estimated at $15 trillion which is way more than the cost of America’s last three wars: Vietnam war cost about $168 billion (worth around $950 billion in 2011 dollars) in the entire war, the Gulf war costs totalled just over $1.1 trillion, and the never-ending war in Afghanistan is estimated at nearly $2 trillion.
I hadn’t been born yet, I still had 6 months to go but on January 8th, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared the war on poverty with his Economic Opportunity Act of 1964.
The War on Poverty represented the crown jewel, the consummation of the liberal vision of society and of government programs as the solution to social problems; the triumph of the welfare state!
According to the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, since the Johnson Administration, almost $15 trillion has been spent on…
