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Poverty

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Submitted By Ausia
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Ausia White
Economics of Social Issues Spring ‘16
Gerald Hunt

The War on Poverty: Are There Any steps to Success? In 1964, the president of the state of unions, Lyndon B. Johnson spoke out and said “This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war of poverty. Taxpayers spent twenty-two trillion dollars on anti-poverty programs, and this doesn’t include the help from social security or Medicare. This is three times more than the cost of all United States Military wars since the American Revolution. President Johnson’s goal was to reduce the cause of poverty rather than the consequences thereafter. The United States Census Bureau is scheduled to do an annual poverty report in 2014, which marked the 50th anniversary of when President Johnson launched the “War on Poverty”. Some say the lack of self-sufficiency is majority the welfare systems fault. From 1967-2015 the percentage of Americans citizens who were poor by the official poverty standards, are averaging close to the same. Although when the economy was doing well (2000-2010) the poverty rate would increase by two to three percent, but the economy is near rock bottom due to the poverty level rises to a similar amount (since the 1960’s). Before then the poverty level was at its high of 32.2 percent, during the first year the “War on Poverty” began to operate the percentage of Americans in poverty cut to 17.3 percent and never went that high since then. For the past 45 years the consistency of the poverty level stumped, because of the amount of money the anti-poverty and welfare programs spend. In 2013 the federal government ran over 80 means-tested welfare programs that provided cash, food, housing, medical care, and targeted social services to the poor and low incomes Americans. Nearly one third of Americans (roughly one-hundred millions) benefited from at least one of the programs. Federal

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