In the article “War on Poverty After 50 Years” by Robert
Rector and Rachel Sheffield they describe what the war on poverty means and how
it has effected the United States since it started. The war on poverty
originated from President Lyndon Johnson, his plan was to reduce the amount of
poverty in the United States. Rector and Sheffield discuss the progress that
this movement has made, and the specific statistics that show how the poverty
rate and government spending on welfare compare from then to 2012. They explain
how there hasn’t been much progress since the war on poverty originally
started. The data shows that the poverty rate has either stayed relatively the
same or only went down a little bit. Over all the war on poverty hasn’t negatively
effected the U.S at all, but it also hasn’t achieved the original goal of eliminating
a lot of poverty. The government is spending so much money on welfare funds,
and people are still poor.
The authors use statistics from the U.S census bureau that
show graphs about poverty rate, self-sufficiency, unwed birth rates, total
families with children, and families with children in specific poverty. These
graphs show the audience how much progress has been made since 1964 to 2012,
and how certain situations relate to the poverty in America. The effect of this
makes their claims believable and reliable because the information is coming
from real evidence shown in the U.S census.
Matthews, Dylan. "Everything You Need to Know about the War on Poverty." Washington Post.The Washington Post, 8 Jan. 2014. Web. 01 Mar. 2016.
ReplyDeleteIn the Washington Post article, "Everything you need to know about the war on poverty Dylan Matthews defines the "war on poverty" as a set of acts that are established by Lyndon B. Johnson. Johnson's goal was to help fix poverty and to also find a way to keep it from happening again. So Johnson created four different pieces of legislation to change that. Some of which include the Social Security Amendment, Food Stamp Act, Economic Opportunity Act, and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. With each of these programs and the United States Government getting involved in the economy the percentage of poverty from 1967 to 2012 changed dramatically from twenty-sex percent to sixteen percent.
Dylan Matthew’s article, “Everything You Need to Know about the War on Poverty” is very important when it comes to Johnson and the government’s social programs. By Matthews supporting his facts with statistics and graphs it allows us to see that these programs did have a great effect from 1967 until now. Allowing me to see that proposing these different programs and the help of the government was heavenly needed in order to make a change.
Ryan, Paul. "Rethinking the War on Poverty." TEDx Convention. Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. 17 June 2015.
ReplyDeleteIn Paul Ryan's speech, "Rethinking the War on Poverty" , he explains exactly what the war on poverty is and what it did for our country. He gave a story about how it is for people who are under government assistance to get out of poverty. Yet, he takes back what he said about it taking people out of poverty, when in fact it is creating a trap for people on food stamps, welfare, etc. Paul gives this example, assume there is a single mother who works forty hours a week and is on minimum wage. She gets an offer for a job that is willing to pay three dollars more an hour, however, once she calculates the taxes she will pay and the benefits shell lose shes only going to make ten cents more than before. It doesnt pay to take that new job. Which is were the trap comes in to play, this isolates people that use government aid. It keeps them where they are it doesnt do anything to really help them, all it does is hinder their motivation to better their situation.