Quote:
Originally Posted by Beemnseven
So let's see, in the 60's the poverty rate declined because the government pointed their guns at the heads of the producers, stole more money from them and gave it to the bums. Well, I guess that's one way to do something about poverty.
As you pointed out, poverty has been around a very long time; but sorry to say, it will always be here. There will always be poor people. There won't be an economic system ever devised that will save absolutely everyone.
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Absolutely correct, but is this necessarily an argument against government involvement in trying to find the most practical methods to deal with this reality? Look, I read the story you told about the homeless guy, with the concluding statement that sometimes you need "to reach for the helping hand." But the danger is in projecting that story out and seeing poverty as always being the fault of the individuals suffering from it (which I'm not saying you are saying). The fact is that government involvement in dealing with poverty is, first, quite literally centuries old, and second, is not, and has never been, exclusively driven by compassion and/or moral imperatives. Hardly. So, that we have in our history (e.g., the 60s programs) attempts to apply a level of sophistication to a routine government operation, ones greater than simply labeling poverty an individual disease and sticking all the infected in poorhouses, is, in my opinion to our credit. Yes, some programs have worked better than others, but system improvement is a better solution, I think, to no-end-game cessation of them.
My own opinion, and I know you and others fundamentally disagree, is that the programs that emerged from the Great Society have immeasurably improved the lives of millions, far more than they have affected harm. I admit to a bias, seeing as how my entire legal/policy career has been devoted to quite possiblly the most enduring product of it--the Medicaid program. The degree to which the program has provided critical support to persons with disabilities and low-income elderly (even those who have Medicare) is astounding, and I'm not aware of how, if we were to turn to the clock back to the 60s, things could have been constructed differently that would still have allowed these individuals to access the support Medicaid has provided, support that in many circumstances has been life-saving, and in others has allowed individuals to attain services that has prevented institutionalization and allowed them to be active members of the community.
And this program is a federal/state partnership, a voluntary program that every state has agreed to participate in. Developments leading up to the birth of the program didn't exactly tend toward the eventual availability of comprehensive medical insurance for these individuals that wasn't government supported. Far from it. So, to write off this program, being one example of a 60s product, as one forced-by-gunpoint down the throats of states for the sole purpose of advancing a political agenda unfairly downplays what inspired its creation and what value it has provided since.