Honoring LBJ's "War on Poverty" Half a Century Later

I missed the actual 50th anniversary of LBJ announcing a "war on poverty" some weeks ago.

But I figured the spirit is still there, if we want it to be. So, here is an interesting article that attempts to show that a similar effort to eradicate poverty is possible in the here and now. For too long, the "war on poverty" in this country has indeed meant just that - a constant and deliberate effort to undermine the impoverished, so that the rich can get even richer. The nation, and perhaps on some level the world, turned back to a tried and true economic direction: "trickle down economics".

Of course, that kind of thinking, and those kinds of policies, have been tried before. They led to the Great Depression, the most serious economic catastrophe to hit the modern United States, and indeed, world.

It should not be forgotten that this economic approach also more recently led to the most serious economic crisis since then -what is commonly referred to as the "Great Recession".

But there was a time when we tried to achieve something greater than a system that rewards the greedy, and punishes the needy.

So, in honor of that more noble spirit of a former age, here is a link to an article that hearkens back to that effort to make America a better place, "The Great Society" as Lyndon B. Johnson called it, and seeks to renew that sense of a greater purpose than ourselves, and the consumer comfort items that we have been conditioned to try and accumulate from the first:


"Fifty years ago this week, President Lyndon B. Johnson launched his "war on poverty," which led to many of the federal and state initiatives low-income Americans rely on today — Medicaid, Medicare, subsidized housing, Head Start, legal services, nutrition assistance, raising the minimum wage, and later, food stamps and Pell grants. Five decades later, many say another war on poverty is needed. We are joined by Peter Edelman, author of "So Rich, So Poor: Why It’s So Hard to End Poverty in America." A faculty director at the Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy at Georgetown University, Edelman was a top adviser to Senator Robert F. Kennedy and a member of President Bill Clinton’s administration until he resigned in protest after Clinton signed the 1996 welfare reform law that threw millions of people off the rolls."


"50 Years After LBJ's 'War on Poverty', A Call For A New Fight Against 21st Century Inequality" by Amy Goodman and Jaun Gonzalez of Democracy Now!, published: Friday 10 January 2014

http://www.nationofchange.org/50-years-after-lbj-s-war-poverty-call-new-fight-against-21st-century-inequality-1389371033