The War on Poverty - $40 Trillion Funding Failure Rather than Facebook or FUBU or Ford

Last year the United States celebrated the 50th anniversary of the War on Poverty begun by LBJ in 1964. Over that time the country has spent approximately $40 trillion on welfare and redistribution programs of one sort or another – and that number doesn’t include expenditures for Social Security or Medicare. The program started out slow, but has steadily picked up steam so that today the United States spends over a trillion dollars on welfare programs every year. To put that $1 trillion in perspective, that is more than the GDP of every country on the planet except for the 15 largest. It’s bigger than the GDP of Sweden, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Turkey, the Netherlands and around 175 others.

That’s a lot of money, but it must be worth it as the War on Poverty must have been a success… right? Not so much. Today poverty in the United States stands at approximately 15% of the population. Fifteen percent sounds relatively low, except when compared to the 18% rate it was $40 trillion dollars ago. After $40 trillion dollars and 50 years, the War on Poverty has reduced poverty by a staggering 3 percentage points!  What's worse, the War on Poverty actually stopped the progress that was already occurring:  During the 15 years prior to the beginning of the War on Poverty, the poverty rate in the United States had dropped from 30% to 15%!

Indeed, the single biggest accomplishment of the War on Poverty seems to have been the proliferation of single parent households… i.e. children born out of wedlock. In 1964 the percentage of American children born to unwed mothers was approximately 4%... so out of every 20 babies born, only 1 was born to an unwed mother. Today 8 out of every 20 babies born in the United States is born to an unwed mother. And according to studies by HHS and others, that’s largely because the welfare state has made such as choice feasible: Holding constant a wide range of variables, including income, education, and urban vs. suburban setting, the study found that a 50 percent increase in the value of AFDC and foodstamp payments led to a 43 percent increase in the number of out-of-wedlock births.

And the proliferation of unwed motherhood has resulted in a dramatic increase in crime, violent crime in particular. According to the Atlantic Magazine: “The relationship [between single-parent families and crime] is so strong that controlling for family configuration erases the relationship between race and crime and between low income and crime. This conclusion shows up time and again in the literature.” In 1965 there were 20 violent crimes for every 1000 Americans. By 2013 that number was 37. That doubling might not sound bad, until you realize that the incarceration rate in the US tripled over that same period, which means that as a percentage of the population there are three times as many Americans incarcerated today as there were when the War on Poverty began, but with many more criminals locked up the violent crime rate has still doubled.

So almost $1 trillion a year of welfare spending for half a century has basically made a small decrease in the poverty rate, pushed unwed motherhood through the stratosphere and dramatically increased the violent crime rate and prison population in the country. That sounds like a typical government success story.

Now let’s compare that to what a trillion dollars in one year might look like were in the private sector. Below are fifteen companies whose combined North American revenue was $1 trillion last year: Amazon, Apple, Coke, Disney, ExxonMobil, Facebook, Ford, General Electric, Google, J&J, JP Morgan, McDonalds, Microsoft, Nike, Walmart. So these companies with a combined $1 billion in revenue, what have they accomplished? Simply put, they have changed the world. Walmart has almost single handedly changed American retailing and driven inflation down everyone. Amazon redefined retail even further. Microsoft and Apple essentially created the computer revolution. McDonalds feeds the entire US population once a month. Facebook has connected a billion people around the world. Disney has entertained generations, ExxonMobil has fueled their journeys and Ford has built their cars and trucks.

Not only do these companies employ millions of people directly, but indirectly via their suppliers they drive the employment of tens of millions of others. So with a trillion dollars in revenue – money that was willingly exchanged for products and services – these companies have directly or indirectly generated an income for tens of millions of Americans who in turn support millions more family members. And they accomplished all of that while providing material benefits to the country as a whole.

One has to wonder what might have become of poverty had the $40 trillion the government siphoned out of the pockets of hard working Americans over the last half century had been left in their pockets. How many more of those children born to a single mother might have been born into a two parent household, gotten an education and gone on to start the next Disney or FUBU or UBER? How many more Spanx or Harpo Productions or Mary Kay Cosmetics were never founded because single mothers were sitting at home waiting for a welfare check rather than coming up with some revolutionary entrepreneurial moonshot? How many Under Armours or Facebooks or Chipotles never got founded because children grew up in poverty with no positive male role models around to help guide them? How much poverty would have been eliminated had each year’s trillion dollars gone into financing new startups rather than creating a dependency ecosystem?

At the end of the day the War on Poverty has been nothing short of a disaster. Not only has it sucked $40 trillion out of the hands of American workers and entrepreneurs, but it has also created an environment where tragic of circumstances have become the norm for tens of millions of Americans. More crime, more broken families and more broken dreams are the outcome of a half century of government failure. The tragedy is that this abject failure took place during one of the most economically dynamic periods in American history, and as a result of another failed government policy tens of millions of Americans found themselves stuck in the quicksand of government dependency and never had much of a shot at pursuing the American dream and seeing what potential greatness they might have brought to the world.

The red herring of Ferguson: The #1 cause of death for black men ages 15-34? Murder – by other black men.

One of the worst things about war is the fact that the people usually doing the fighting are those most physically capable of fighting, usually a nation’s strongest and most vibrant young men. The men most able to build or sustain a nation’s prosperity are the very ones that are going away to war and too often not coming back. As costly as war is, it’s usually undertaken because a nation, or its leaders or its citizens, think the sacrifice is worth achieving some objective.

The loss of such strong and vibrant youth is a cost that is paid not only by the families of the dead, but it’s paid by the communities and the nations that are left without whatever contributions the young men might have made to the world around him.

War is hell, as they say, and looking over a battlefield littered with a nation’s treasured youth is the perfect embodiment of that. The sacrifices always hurt, but they are to some degree understandable because they are undertaken in the pursuit of some greater good.

Which brings us to Ferguson, MO, and not just because it looked a lot like a war zone recently. No, Ferguson is important because of what sparked the riots: the shooting of an unarmed black youth by a white police officer.

To listen to the protesters is to understand that America is rampant with white cops killing innocent black men in every town or city. That is simply not true. More importantly, it’s a red herring. (Yes, white cops do sometimes kill innocent black men, but it’s relatively rare.) But why is it a red herring? Because it takes the focus off the fact that the number one killer of young black men ages 15-34 is… murder, and not by white cops or white people at all. It’s murder by other young black men! (For young black men ages 15-24, fully 50% of their deaths are due to murder!) How is it possible that in 2014 the number one killer of the most robust and vibrant elements of black America is murder? Not accidents. Not cancer. Not sickle cell anemia… it’s murder by other black men!

And this is where the connection with war comes in. During war the young men whose lives are lost are sacrificed for a purpose, for something that has been deemed in the national interest in one sort of another. Young black men who are dying on our streets and in our cities on the other hand are dying for… nothing.

Which is what makes the red herring of Ferguson so heartbreaking. Even if such protests were to ensure that no white cop ever killed another innocent black man, the scourge of death and murder that pervades the black community wouldn’t diminish by much beyond a small fraction of the total deaths.

So while the American media spent a week and a half obsessed with a burning Ferguson where protesters pelted cops with Molotov cocktails, bricks and urine, dozens of young black men were being killed in obscurity around the country by other black men. But of course it’s so much easier to throw bottles and make accusations than it is to advocate for real solutions to real problems. Problems like a dearth of fathers as 73% of all black children are born to single mothers. Problems like a crumbling education system where Democrats and the teachers’ unions keep the poorest children tethered to failed public schools. Problems like minimum wage laws that make it prohibitively expensive to hire young black men with little work experience, resulting in an unemployment rate in excess of 20% while the national rate is below 6%. Problems like a government welfare system that grows like an unbridled leviathan seeking to expand its budget rather than help the poor find their dignity, self respect and the pride that comes with being contributing member of society.

But none of those things are nearly as visually compelling as watching police square off against protesters. None of those things lend themselves to pithy sayings that are easily captured on tee shirts or cardboard signs or in 30 second sound bites. None of those things inspire media savvy “leaders” to roll up their sleeves and get busy trying to solve real problems. None of those things are easy. They are by definition hard problems to solve. It takes real work to solve them and they can’t be fixed by rioting.

Which is the tragedy of the red herring of Ferguson. Regardless of what the circumstances were, losing a son is devastating for a family. Thousands of black families across the country experience equally painful losses each year. By focusing energy, passion, angst and media on the aberration of Ferguson it takes the spotlight off of where it should be, which is solving the problems that cause thousands of young black men to lose their lives every year whose families don’t at least get the solace of knowing their sons died fighting for something of value to them and society as a whole.

The Constitution, Deadbeat Dads, and the Hypocrisy of Obamacare

America is now poised to enjoy the fruits of what has been a demand from the left for over a quarter century: Government mandated socialized medicine.

There have always been three main arguments behind that drive:
1) Everyone has a right to free healthcare.
2) Fairness
3) We’re paying for it anyway.

As usual, the liberals miss the mark on all three fronts.

On the first they are wrong about what a right is. Our Constitution explicitly defines a number of rights… Speech, Religious liberty, Assembly etc. Most of the rights enumerated in the Constitution limit the government from impeding on a citizen’s free exercise of those rights. Other than the 6th and 7th Amendments’ right to a jury trial, nothing in these rights impose duties on others to provide anything. Rights are things you could take with you if you decided to move to a desert island somewhere where there was no one else there to provide them.

Healthcare is simply not a right. It is not free. It is not an infinite resource that can be redistributed endlessly. No, healthcare is a service that must be provided by individuals who willingly exchange their time and energy for whatever value someone else places on it. They do that so that they can in turn exchange that money with others for things like garbage services, car loans, dental floss, chocolate, gasoline, video games and a wide variety of goods and services for which they are either not interested in or not capable of providing for themselves. That alone distinguishes healthcare from a right.

The right to free healthcare is nowhere to be found in the Constitution. Indeed, none other than the patron saint of progressives, community activist Barack Obama recognized as much: “…the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf…” Too bad President Barack Obama forgot as much.

The left also has it wrong on the notion of fairness. Fairness is a value judgment, not a logical basis upon which to distribute a finite resource. Fairness is relative to the person making the judgment. History, both ancient and near, is full of stories of people fighting over land and property they feel is rightfully, fairly, theirs. Fair depends on perspective.

What’s more, life is simply not “fair”. Some people are tall, while others are short. Some are kind while others make the Grinch look like Ghandi. Some are skinny, others are fat while a few look like Adonis or Aphrodite. More importantly, some work hard while others seek to live off of the efforts of others. Those differences have existed throughout history and will continue to do so as long as we remain human. As such, there is simply no way to ensure “fairness” because everyone has a different understanding of the word. We see this demonstrated every day. Liberals think it’s fair to take half or more of what someone earns to give to others while those whose sweat or intelligence generate wealth think they should be able to keep it.

Finally, those demanding universal healthcare are hypocrites as well. Not sure? Ask them about the following. They claim that the government should provide healthcare to everyone because we’re paying for it anyway when people who can’t pay go to emergency rooms and the rest of America has to pay extra to cover them. If that logic works, how about extending it to unwed mothers and deadbeat fathers? Unwed mothers are a disproportionately large segment of those living in poverty and receiving welfare. We’re paying for that. Americans have spent trillions of dollars on poverty programs over the last half century; indeed the acronym AFDC stands for Aid For Dependent Children… for which a family was ineligible if a father was present. As such, is it appropriate to forcibly tie the tubes of women who have children they cannot support until such time as they get married or can support the children on their own rather than making the rest of society pay for them?

Similarly we all pay for the police who capture criminals as well as the courts that try them and the prisons to lock them up. Does the progressive logic hold then that since men who grow up without fathers present are disproportionately represented amongst the criminal element, that we should forcibly give men who refuse to raise or support their progeny vasectomies? While someone who cannot afford hypertension medicine or the cost of an ankle cast may be poignant, is it more calamitous than a parent suffering the loss of a son or daughter murdered by a criminal who grew up without a father? If government can seek to ameliorate the former by edict, why not apply that logic to eliminate the second?

At the end of the day, President Obama and his liberal cabal have it wrong on healthcare, as they usually do on virtually every other issue they harness to redistribute wealth and turn the country into a statist Nirvana. From misunderstanding fundamental concepts in the Constitution to ignoring the basic nature of mankind to crafting irrational, self serving arguments, they seek any route available to impose their fatuous, untenable programs on an uninformed public, knowing that once in place they will live on forever.

President Obama is certainly on his way to achieving his goal of “fundamentally transforming America”. One can only wonder as the true nature of Obamacare plays itself out over the next five years and its mandates begin to crush the vitality out of the American spirit, whether citizens might look to something other than the Constitution to save freedom. There is another American document to which they might want to turn. Its first line reads as follows: When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. The catastrophe of Obamacare just might be at the top of the list.