May 5, 2020
On this episode Molly and Sam discuss LBJ’s
“Great
Society,” his welfare state that ruined many black communities and
created generations supported solely by the safety
net.
The dust has settled and the evidence is in: The 1960s Great
Society and War on Poverty programs of President Lyndon Baines
Johnson
(LBJ)
have been a colossal and giant failure. One might make the argument
that social welfare programs are the moral path for a modern
government. They cannot, however, make the argument that these are
in any way effective at alleviating poverty.
In fact, there is evidence that such aggressive programs might make
generational poverty worse. While the notion of a
“culture
of dependence” is a bit of a cliché in conservative circles, there
is evidence that this is indeed the case – that, consciously or
not, the welfare state creates a culture where people receive
benefits rather than seeking gainful employment or business
ownership.
This is not a moral or even a value judgment against the people
engaged in such a culture. Again, the claim is not that
people
“choose
to be on welfare,” but simply that social welfare programs
incentivize poverty, which has an impact on communities that has
nothing to do with individual intent.
We are now over 50 years into the development of the Great Society
and the War on Poverty. It is time to take stock in these programs
from an objective and evidence-based perspective. When one does
that, it is not only clear that the programs have been a failure,
but also that they have disproportionately impacted the black
community in the United States. The current state of dysfunction in
the black community
(astronomically
high crime rates, very low rates of home ownership and single
motherhood as the norm) are
not
the natural state of the black community in the United States, but
closely tied to the role that social welfare programs play. Or as
Dr. Thomas Sowell stated:
“If we wanted to be serious about evidence, we might compare where
blacks stood a hundred years after the end of slavery with where
they stood after 30 years of the liberal welfare state. In other
words, we could compare hard evidence on
‘the
legacy of slavery’ with hard evidence on the legacy of
liberals.”
You can read Sam’s full article
“Black
America Before LBJ: How the Welfare State Inadvertently Helped Ruin
Black Communities” in Ammo.com’s Resistance
Library.
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