Libertarian BS About The Great Society Subsidizing Poverty

from 1963 when Lyndon Johnson took office until 1970 as the impact of his Great Society programs were felt, the portion of Americans living below the poverty line dropped from 22.2 percent to 12.6 percent, the most dramatic decline over such a brief period in this century ~ Joseph A. Califano Jr. (dob 5/15/1931) Special Assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson (7/26/1965 to 1/20/1969).

If there is one thing that Libertarians absolutely can not stand it is the idea that government can be a force to affect positive economic or societal change. Fact is, Libertarians strongly believe that government can't do anything right. One of their favorite pastimes is running down government and heaping praise on the so-called "free market". It's the answer to all our problems, doncha know?

If they aren't demonizing government, an institution that represents The People and works on their behalf (in so far as they haven't been bribed by the wealthy elites), then Libertarians are demonizing poor people; and the demonization of both is exemplified in this recent post by a Libertarian blog I check in from time to time.

Libertarian blogger: The poverty rate was coming down precipitously in this country and for the most part people weren't having children out of wedlock, and then came the Great Society. Thank you so much, the political class. ...this is one hell of a strong correlation and you know, YOU KNOW, that if the trend-lines had been plotted out in the opposite direction the left would have been singing and dancing that it was some sort of proof-positive that the Great Society was effective. And the fact that it makes such total fucking sense. Of course when you subsidize something you're going to get more of it. Hello! (11/12/2013 AT 7:43pm).

The poverty rate was coming down because our economy was growing due to industrialization and continuing innovation, for which, yes, we can thank the so-called "free market". But the reason EVERYONE benefited is because of the existence of unions; organizations that allowed workers to bargain for their share of the wealth. According to Mr. Libertarian Blogger (Mr. LB) Democrats can't blame Reagan, but it was Reagan who kicked off his presidency by declaring a war on working people, as Liberal Talker Thom Hartmann points out in his 2006 book Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class...

Thom Hartmann: We can easily trace decline [of unionization] to Reagan's first public declaration of war on the middle class when he went after the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) in 1981. He broke the back of the air-traffic controllers' union and began the practice of using the Department of Labor - traditionally the ally of workers - against organized labor and working people. (Excerpt from Thom's book reprinted by Alternet, 9/5/2006).

If you look at the graph Mr. LB includes with his post to "prove" that LBJ's war on poverty actually subsidized poverty and therefore increased it, you will get the impression that the Great Society didn't have much of an impact, but that is because the graph covers such a large period of time (1940-2010) and all the programs that comprised the Great Society were not actually fully in effect for very long, as noted by Wikipedia...

Wikipedia/The Great Society/The War On Poverty: The War on Poverty [began with] the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, which created the OEO to oversee a variety of community-based antipoverty programs. ... The OEO was dismantled by the Nixon and Ford administrations, largely by transferring poverty programs to other government departments. Funding for many of these programs were further cut in President Ronald Reagan's first budget in 1981.

Mr. Libertarian Blogger is criticizing a program that began in 1964 and for which the dismantling commenced only 5 years later (under Nixon who assumed office in 1969)? And, then there is the fact that Johnson got us involved in the Vietnam war the previous year (1963) and "Anti-war Democrats complained that spending on the Vietnam War choked off the Great Society". So, the programs were under-funded due to money spend on the Vietnam conflict, which brings us to what the actual criticism should be... a criticism the Lefty publication The Nation notes was levied by Martin Luther King...

Mark Engler, writing for The Nation: King criticized Johnson's War on Poverty for being too piecemeal. While housing programs, job training and family counseling were not themselves unsound, he wrote that "all have a fatal disadvantage. The programs have never proceeded on a coordinated basis... At no time has a total, coordinated and fully adequate program been conceived". (Dr. Martin Luther King's Economics: Through Jobs, Freedom 1/15/2010).

The obvious conclusion is that the Great Society didn't do enough and it didn't do it long enough. Mr. LB did not present "one hell of a strong correlation" that the Great Society caused poverty to increase, as the short while that it was in place it did have an effect (as Joseph A. Califano Jr. points out in the quote at the top of my post).

As for the graph and conclusion drawn from it by Mr. LB that out-of-wedlock births have increased (again) due to the Great Society... this is a simple-minded conclusion (the kind of conclusions Conservatives and Libertarians excel at). The Brookings Institute analyzed the data, and their conclusion was that out-of-wedlock births in the United States increased due to "technology shock".

The researchers lay out their hypothesis as follows...

Brookings: In the late 1960s and very early 1970s (well before Roe v. Wade in January 1973) many major states, including NY and CA, liberalized their abortion laws. At about the same time it became easier for unmarried people to obtain contraceptives. ... We have found that this rather sudden increase in the availability of both abortion and contraception [caused] reproductive technology shock... In our view, it was the technology shock itself that, by eroding the age-old custom of shotgun marriage, paradoxically raised out-of-wedlock birth rates instead of lowering them. (An Analysis of Out-Of-Wedlock Births in the United States by George A. Akerlof and Janet L. Yellen of Brookings, 8/1996).

Why? Brookings concludes that...

Brookings: Women who were willing to get an abortion or who reliably used contraception no longer found it necessary to condition sexual relations on a promise of marriage in the event of pregnancy. But women who wanted children, who did not want an abortion for moral or religious reasons, or who were unreliable in their use of contraception found themselves pressured to participate in premarital sexual relations without being able to exact a promise of marriage in case of pregnancy. (same credit as previous quote).

Thus out of wedlock births increased. Granted, this explanation is a little more complicated and nuanced than the one put forward by Libertarians and Conservatives who think like Mr. LB. It makes sense to me, in any case. More so than the notion that poor people prefer to live in poverty, so long as they're getting welfare from the government... and a poor woman will have kids out of wedlock on purpose just to get more bennies. Regarding that argument Brookings said...

Brookings: One argument that appeals to conservatives is that of Charles Murray, who attributes the increase to overly generous federal welfare benefits. But... welfare benefits could not have played a major role in the rise of out-of-wedlock births because benefits rose sharply in the 1960s and then fell in the 1970s and 1980s, when out-of-wedlock births rose most. (same credit as previous Brookings excerpt).

However, as I pointed out earlier, demonizing the poor is something Libertarians and Conservatives excel at. If you say the government can't help the poor (and in fact it makes poverty worse) then no money need be spent on these types of programs. There is therefore no need to tax the wealthy to help the less fortunate (as it only harms them). And, let us not forget that it's their own fault for being lazy and preferring to lie back in the social safety net hammock instead of working hard to get ahead.

But most people do not prefer to only get by. Most people do work hard but simply can't get ahead... as the plutocrats are taking more and more, which is easier for them to do since Reagan and his war on unions. It certainly is no coincidence that Libertarians and Conservatives also hate unions, as unions allow workers to bargain for higher wages. Also, it is no coincidence that Libertarians and Conservatives love free trade, as that also drives down wages for working folks. Hello!

SWTD #218, wDel #41.

A Disgusting Attack On Children And Adults Living In Poverty From A Sick Conservative Mind

The slave was precious to his master because of the money he had cost him... They were worth at least as much as they could be sold for in the market... It is the impossibility of living by any other means that compels our farm labourers to till the soil whose fruits they will not eat and our masons to construct buildings in which they will not live... It is want that compels them to go down on their knees to the rich man in order to get from him permission to enrich him... what effective gain [has] the suppression of slavery brought [him ?] He is free, you say. Ah! That is his misfortune... These men... [have] the most terrible, the most imperious of masters, that is, need. They must therefore find someone to hire them, or die of hunger. Is that to be free? ~ Simon Linguet (7/14/1736 to 6/27/1794) French journalist and advocate, 1763.

I have, in comments on a Conservative blog referred to workers toiling for low amounts of money as "wage slaves. In response, a sick individual who calls himself dmarks (real name Dennis Marks) responded with the following...

Dennis Marks: "Wave slave" is one of those phrases made up by people completely ignorant of economics that does two bad things... 1) it levels a nasty insult at working people. 2) It trivializes real slavery, by implying that experience of real slaves isn't any worse than that of some kid from a well-fed family working at Starbucks whose only worry that he might not be able to afford trading in his iPhone 4S for an iPhone 5. (2/21/2013 AT 4:14pm).

This is really sick, disgusting stuff. It trivializes poverty. Wage slavery is real. Wikipedia describes it as "a situation perceived as quasi-voluntary slavery, where a person's livelihood depends on wages, especially when the dependence is total and immediate".

For individuals living in poverty, a low-paying job CAN accurately be described as "wage slavery", as the dependence on their wages are total and immediate. But notice that Mr. Marks denies the fact that poverty even exists, claiming that the troubles of a person earning a low salary have to do with them needlessly and foolishly upgrading their iPhone!

This is what Conservatives usually do when confronted with the ugly realities their self-centered greedy worldview (when put into practice by Republican legislators) creates. First they deny that poverty exists, by talking about the "poor" having things like microwaves and refrigerators (to start. Then they go to another level by claiming that poor people are buying widescreen TVs and iPhones).

This is what is known as blaming the victim. If the victim is responsible for their own predicament (those making low wages made - and continue to make - poor life choices), then the greedy Conservative is absolved of any responsibility or uncomfortable guilty feelings. There is no need for any compassion what-so-ever.

However, An article on the National Center for Law and Economic Justice website (a national non-profit organization dedicated to "advancing the cause of economic justice for low-income families, individuals, and communities across the country") reports, that "Census figures released in September 2012 reveal record-high numbers of people continue to live in poverty in the United States".

According to the report, "46.2 million people, [or] One out of seven people... were living in poverty in the United States in 2011 - the largest number of persons counted as poor in the 53 years of poverty measurements".

Shameful, huh? The wealthiest country on the planet and poverty is at an all time high. Yet, we have Conservatives like Dennis denying that poverty even exists! He further makes light of my use of the term "wage slave" by referring to a minimum wage earner's child as "well-fed". The truth is that 21.9 percent of children live in poverty, and "more than 20 million US children rely on school meal programs to keep from going hungry" (20 Facts About Child Hunger).

The reason Conservatives like Dennis deny the plight of the working poor is because they do not wish to pay slightly higher taxes to combat poverty. They also do not want to pay slightly more for their goods and services, so they rail against raising the minimum wage (many even call for eliminating it all together). They claim that a minimum wage HURTS low wage earners (because employers will be "forced" to fire them, or not hire them at all). This is categorically false, as I pointed out in my previous post. (It is also why they support job-destroying free trade agreements).

So why do these individuals deny the facts so emphatically? The answer is greed, plain and simple. Dennis' feigning concern over the trivialization of slavery is SO transparent. The term "wage slave" does NOT imply that the experience of real slaves wasn't (or isn't) worse, but his rejection of the term DOES trivialize poverty.

In Dennis' world slavery is awesome when the slave masters have no need for any concern at all regarding whether or not their slaves have adequate food, clothing, shelter and medical care. Clearly empathy is a completely foreign concept to these individuals, which is why they have to pretend to be offended on behalf of people living in bondage, or pretend Liberals are jingoistic when they express concern about the outsourcing of good-paying American jobs (yes, this is another ridiculous claim Dennis regularly makes).

When Conservatives like Dennis spout this nonsense it is because they are trying to cover for their selfishness and greed - it's the same reason they accuse the president of being a "socialist" when he's actually a Conservative Democrat.

SWTD #123, dDel #1.