May 032015
The War on Poverty After 50 Years
Boils down to this graph:
In short… the poverty rate had been plummeting since just after WWII. The plummet stopped and leveled off once the Great Society wealth transfer “War on Poverty” programs kicked in, and the poverty rate has remained constant ever since. However, spending on these programs has skyrocketed. Since 1964, the US has spent (in 2012 dollars) more than 22 TRILLION dollars on anti poverty programs… NOT counting Social Security and Medicare.
How many comets could we have dropped on Mars to terraform the joint into a second Earth for even *half* that amount?