Poverty

The Great Society became known as the war on poverty. It was a success in the first ten years the poverty level dropped from 19% in 1964 to 11% in 1974. Since that time it has slowly increased to 15% today. The cost has been $23 trillion dollars. This year the federal, state, and local governments will spend close to a combined $1 trillion to fund more than 100 separate anti‐​poverty programs. In fact, since Lyndon Johnson declared “war on poverty” in 1965, government efforts to fight poverty have cost more than $23 trillion. In 2020 before the pandemic there were 43 million people living in poverty. As a comparison with other programs. The government spent: $1.6 trillion on Medicare $1.2 trillion on Social security $0.7 trillion on Medicaid $0.8 trillion on Defense