Where our money has failed

In the mid-1960s , when LBJ was President we had "The War on Poverty" At the time our poverty rate was 14% (you can check with the Bureau of Statistics). Since that time; or at least until 2009 (the last ear the numbers were available) the poverty rate is .... 14.3% We have spent TRILLIONS of dollars (estimates are in excess of 10 trillion) and we sure did defeat poverty!

One can complain about the waste in our military; and there is plenty of that to go around. But to spend trillions of dolars and not even make a minimal dent in reducing the number of poor would be like saying that we spent trillions to defeat Hitler and he has just conquered Canada. Why have we not put the blame for this fiscal disaster where it belongs: Mosty with the democrats (and some republicans), but more directly on the left wingers that insist that you can 'defeat' poverty by throwing money at it.

Well as a good friend of mine from Africa has said many times, " You can't through money at something and expect it to go away. You have to want it to go away. And you have to earn the right for it to go away." It is time that we stop these money sucking programs that are compliments of LBJ and his left wing successors and get back to basics that made this country the sucess that is was (is?). Less regulations that strangle innovation, less government spending on what should local decisions and less money to defeat something that can only be defeated by those that want to defeat it And less taxes so the idiots in DC cannot spend what they do not have!.

Trust me, the money did achieve a lot, it helped to lower the rate of marriage, expand the ghettos, prime example Detroit and encourage more out of wedlock births.

The budget's "Human Resource" superfunction consumes about two-thirds of the federal budget.

This total includes:
- Education, Training, and social services; (115
- Health; (388
- Medicare ; (484
- Income Security (623
- Social Security ; (748
- Vet benefits & services (paltry 141

These are the functions that conservatives usually criticize. Together, the functions represent 2.5 trillion dollars (about two-thirds of the budget). The funds are driven in large part by entitlements (i.e. - formulas decide who deserves the funds - and how much).

The Obama budget already calls for decreases in spending in Education (115 B drops down to 104 health research (from 36 B to 32 , and income security (from 623 B down to 519 . That's 117 Billion in reductions between 2011 and 2015, per the Obama budget proposal of 2011.

The remaining functional areas are driven by entitlements - which means you either:
- adjust the entitlement (voters - particularly senior citizens generally won't stand for that)
- adjust the way the entitlement is delivered (administrative/overhead costs).

The deficit is a structural problem even more than it's a policy problem.

The population of the U.S. was under 200 million in the mid 60s. It was 307 million last year.

To keep poverty at 14% with that kind of increase in population is quite remarkable.

Nothing remarkable about it

---

poverty is defined statistically in America...... It's a floating threshold.
(poverty is the proportion of families earning less than 60 percent of the median family income).

Today's American families living in poverty likely own cell phones - and might even have a computer in their home.

What's remarkable is how much times have changed. We've added 100 million people to our population, and the economy has absorbed them - even while lifting the standard of living for virtually everyone.

If you used the global definition (earning less than $2/day) ---- virtually nobody in the USA lives in poverty.