Krugman Examines The War We Didn't Really Lose: Johnson's War On Poverty

Krugman

Paul Krugman claims, with considerable justification, that today's political right‑wingers are "still living in the 1970s, or actually a Reaganite fantasy of the 1970s" in which "[p]overty was therefore a problem of values and social cohesion, not money." Hence "[the Right's] notion of an anti-poverty agenda is still all about getting those layabouts to go to work and stop living off welfare." But as Krugman says, "[t]he reality that lower-end jobs, even if you can get one, don’t pay enough to lift you out of poverty just hasn’t sunk in." As far as the Right is concerned, poverty is a sign of moral, not financial, bankruptcy, and must be punished, not alleviated by government.

In other words, America's Right is an organized, well-funded group of utter failures as human beings. If the nation is to survive, the Right must not be allowed to continue to control the agenda: the drastic bimodal nature of wealth in America, particularly, the lack of opportunity to find jobs that pay a living wage and the consequent starvation of whole families, are far more the cause than the result of poverty. Johnson's War on Poverty was in fact won... yes, by proactive government intervention... but the victory has been stolen over the past 3‑4 decades by people who have an ax to grind and who lack common human sympathy. Maybe, like the war for freedom of speech, the war on poverty is one which requires perpetual re-winning. It's time to enlist, if you haven't already...