The War on Poverty

DOGE needs to take a look. We are spending billions every year to no apparent return on that investment.

I think most conservatives/classic liberals like me would agree, there are some things the government does that are good for citizens – after all we are not anarchists.

Where I think we differ from our frenemies on the left is when the power of the Constitution is extended beyond those enumerated to allow the federal government to play in a sandbox they should not be playing in. Our country is built upon a constitution that specifically places the power to determine the future in the hands of the individuals and the states, not in some corporate, collectivist, arbitrary authority like the federal government. As a matter of fact, the Bill of Rights tells the government what it cannot do, not that it has ever paid much attention to those limitations.

The reason we have had so much conflict over these past many years is that we have perverted the simple directives of this document to create permission to act where there is none. Our county cannot become collectivist or Marxist – or any form of a coerced communistic state – without the destruction of the very basis of our freedom, the Constitution of the United States of America. Today it is the only thing standing between us and a rapid descent toward the American version of Stalinist tyranny…and yes, that is a slight exercise in hyperbole – but only slight. If you are over the age of thirty, look back over your life and see just how much has truly changed in this country.

If government intervention was truly productive it should be evident by now as the bureaucracy has constantly grown – but we still have poverty, we still have crime, we still have illegal immigration.

It has been time for a DOGE for a long time. We should be asking on behalf of those we are trying to help if there is a positive ROI in any of the government programs.

Ten years ago, the New York Times was halfway honest enough to call it a “mixed bag” and since we have been at it for 60 years, spent billions of dollars and are still warring against poverty, can we call it a failure now?

In my lexicon, there are two kinds of poverty – absolute and relative. Absolute poverty is simply defined as a daily battle for survival – I liken this to the poverty in the slums of New Delhi or the outskirts of Bangkok where people live in leaky, one room tin shacks and survive on a bowl of rice a day. Relative poverty is what we have in the US, where poverty is measured as a percentage of the income level – this allows us to classify people who possess items that are not essential to survival (i.e. mobile phones, TV’s, cars and Playstations) as “poor” and is not true poverty. Efforts to “alleviate” relative poverty are nothing more than attempts to provide a certain guaranteed standard of living, not to assure survival.

The solution to absolute poverty is an educated (not indoctrinated) citizenry possessing real and valuable skills and in a growing, expanding capitalist economy, not government handouts. There is no solution to relative poverty because as the national income rises, so does the “poverty line”.

Absolute poverty does not exist in America and relative poverty is not an issue except when it is used by populists and “progressives” to justify class envy in pursuit of creation of a collectivist state.

Using data from the US Census, the greatest rate of decline in poverty occurred in the years BEFORE the “War on Poverty” was declared – after we started “fighting”, it became a stalemate.

What does that say about the wisdom and effectiveness of inarguably expensive and ineffective governmental poverty relief programs?