The War on Poverty

Matthews, Dylan. “Everything You Need to Know About the War on Poverty.” The Washington Post. The Washington Post., 8 Jan. 2014. Web. 02 Mar. 2016.

Summary:

            In the article “Everything You Need to Know About the War on Poverty”, Dylan Matthews explains how the war on poverty started and how it has affected us today. The war on poverty started in Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency, where he decided that we needed to get rid of the growing poverty in America. He did this by creating Medicare and Medicaid, expanding the benefits of Social Security, and also creating SNAP. The article then goes onto show how Johnson’s programs affected poverty in the long run. It turns out that every program has helped to decrease poverty in today’s world. Without these programs, poverty would have continued to increase since 1967, and if we want to continue to decrease poverty, then Matthews suggests that we continue to have the government create more programs to reduce poverty. To continue to reduce poverty to the government needs to raise minimum wage, cut down on the high marginal tax rates, and create more anti-poverty programs like Social Security.

Evaluation:

            The article was both authoritative and useful because it explained how the war on poverty has affected poverty from the beginning to the end. By using specific historical facts, the article helped to explain how welfare programs like Medicare and Medicaid came about. The charts that Matthews showed within the article helped to achieve a greater understanding of the war on poverty and how it is still affecting us today. They showed that since 1967, poverty has steadily decreased from 26% to 16%. This gives him greater authority because he has facts and proof to back up what he is saying. By using facts and statistics and not his own personal opinion, we tend to believe what he is saying more because he does not seem to be bias since he’s not really putting in his own opinions. He goes by specific historic events and the rate of change of poverty to show that the war on poverty has been working. His bias does seem to come out towards the end of the article when he states what the government should do to continue decreasing poverty, but he does it in such a subtle way that you tend to agree with what he is saying.