Glib Talk from John Edwards
And now for the most ridiculous comment by a Democratic presidential wannabe for this week (John Edwards):
Edwards said wiping out poverty would cost $15 billion to $20 billion a year …
Hmm, the US has spent $9 trillion over the last 40 years to end poverty - yet the poverty rate has not budged. See two graphs below:
Note that the poverty rates stopped dropping, for all races, right when funding took off for the anti-poverty welfare state. As long as government uses means-tested programs to pay people not to work, or to work less - and to pay for their basic subsistence needs (food, shelter, utilities, etc.) - we are not going to dramatically cut poverty rates.
And spending more money on new means-tested programs is just more of the same.
June 26th, 2006 at 11:13 pm
The biggest problem that poor people face is affordable housing.
The way to help poor people is libertarian land use laws. Under the current system, restrictive zoning and bureaucratic land use approval process makes housing unaffordable.
June 27th, 2006 at 9:19 pm
I would like to look into this subject more. Common sense might say that zoning is needed to achieve sensible development. But before zoning, there was still development going on. And older sections of cities seem reasonably organized.
June 29th, 2006 at 6:23 pm
9 trillion over 40 years would be 225 million a year…
July 5th, 2006 at 8:39 am
Jack Doan,
Actually, you missed three zeroes. That is 225 billion a year.
September 12th, 2006 at 10:06 pm
[...] The habit is to ignore the track record of the Great Society programs. You would think that after spending $9 trillion to try and reduce poverty - with no impact - that it is time to try something new. [...]
November 21st, 2006 at 11:31 pm
[...] According to common notions of the anti-poverty welfare system, there is no connection between the growth of underclasses and welfare. In fact, John Edwards says that if we just spend $20 billion more per year we can end poverty in the US! Woe, brilliant! And I am sure too that just a few billion more will fix all of the coming problems with the Hispanic underclass that Heather is warning about in her research. [...]
December 31st, 2006 at 1:10 am
[...] John Edwards is running for president. Make that Mr. “It only takes $15 billion to wipe out poverty Edwards” is running for president. [...]
February 25th, 2007 at 8:24 pm
[...] What we need are welfare policies that are self-limiting. That is not easy to do, especially when Democrats are hell-bent on expanding all of these programs. Recall that John Edwards claims that wiping out poverty would cost only another $15 billion to $20 billion a year! Hew, that was easy. [...]