ONE IN SIX AMERICANS ON THE DOLE
‘Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country can do for you.’
Is this what it has come to since President Kennedy gave his famous speech in January 1961? Recent reports indicate that one in six Americans are now on some kind of welfare. Fifty million Americans are on Medicaid, the federal-state program for the poor. At the end of the Eisenhower presidency in 1961 there were 45 domestic social programs. By the end of the Johnson presidency in 1969 that number had risen to 435. For all the billions of dollars spent since Johnson’s War on Poverty, the poverty rate in this country has essentially stayed the same.
No one denies that we need a safety net for those who truly cannot take care of themselves, but endless welfare programs simply don’t work and in many cases they are self-perpetuating. But that hasn’t discouraged the liberals, who want to increase social spending by increasing taxes on those who would otherwise be creating jobs in this moribund (see WOW) economy. And as George Bernard Shaw famously said, “A government with the policy to rob Peter to pay Paul can be assured of the support of Paul”.