The War on Poverty Turns 50: Why Aren't We Winning?

[ralfy]

BINGO!

Actually, that's the result of a reserve currency, which is a Triffin dilemma.

 

[ralfy]

LBJ

Attacks in Indochina led to increased spending, then loss of confidence in the dollar, and subsequently removal of the gold standard a few years later.

 

[ralfy]

Obummer

Not surprising, as we're looking at one Reagan clone after another put into power. In the end, it's three decades of voodoo economics going down the drain:

http://blogs.reuters.com/rolfe-winkler/2009/09/30/krugman-and-the-pied-pipers-of-debt/

 

[ralfy]

Democrats; the same tired false message for over 50 years.

Democrats? It's Republicans and Democrats foisting heavy borrowing and spending since '45. That includes using the gold standard, then dropping it in place of the petro-dollar, followed by consumer spending from '81 to the present.

 

[ralfy]

If you need proof that Johnson's war on poverty is ongoing for the last five decades; you just might be a dunce.

Major initiatives

Social Security Act 1965 (Created Medicare and Medicaid) – July 19, 1965

Food Stamp Act of 1964- August 31, 1964[3]

The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 which created the Community Action Program, Job Corps and Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), centerpiece of the "war on poverty" – August 20, 1964

Elementary and Secondary Education Act - April 11, 1965

The Office of Economic Opportunity was the agency responsible for administering most of the War on Poverty programs created during Johnson's Administration, including VISTA, Job Corps, Head Start, Legal Services and the Community Action Program. The OEO was established in 1964 and quickly became a target of both left-wing and right-wing critics of the War on Poverty. Directors of the OEO included Sargent Shriver, Bertrand Harding, and Donald Rumsfeld.

The OEO launched Project Head Start as an eight-week summer program in 1965. The project was designed to help end poverty by providing preschool children from low-income families with a program that would meet emotional, social, health, nutritional, and psychological needs. Head Start was then transferred to the Office of Child Development in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (later the Department of Health and Human Services) by the Nixon Administration in 1969.

President Johnson also announced a second project to follow children from the Head Start program. This was implemented in 1967 with Project Follow Through, the largest educational experiment ever conducted.[4]

The policy trains disadvantaged and at-risk youth and has provided more than 2 million disadvantaged young people with the integrated academic, vocational, and social skills training they need to gain independence and get quality, long-term jobs or further their education.[5] Job Corps continues to help 70,000 youths annually at 122 Job Corps centers throughout the country.[6] Besides vocational training, many Job Corps also offer GED programs as well as high school diplomas and programs to get students into college.

Last time I looked, these programs are still ongoing dunce.

Actually, it's been part of U.S. policy regardless of political party, i.e., self-entitlement, tax cuts, foreign intervention, bailing out Wall Street, etc. Hence,

http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-bush-policies-deficits-2010-6

In the end, Bush and Obama are two sides of the same coin.

 

[Truth Detector]

Democrats? It's Republicans and Democrats foisting heavy borrowing and spending since '45. That includes using the gold standard, then dropping it in place of the petro-dollar, followed by consumer spending from '81 to the present.

Wrong; but typical of those who are historically ignorant and pretend that despots, dictators and tyrants have no culpability in the world.

As for the “Gold” standard claims; I have heard nothing coherent or remotely credible to support the claims that not staying on the standard has caused all of our problems we face in the world.

Keeping the Gold Standard is tantamount to claiming that we should be a cash based society; it is dense and uniformed.

By the way, Democrats took us off the Gold standard.

Read and become informed:

Why the Gold Standard Is the World's Worst Economic Idea, in 2 Charts
Matthew O'Brien
Aug 26 2012, 9:52 AM ET

The greatest trick Ron Paul ever pulled was convincing the world that the gold standard leads to stable prices.

Well, maybe not the world. Just the Republican Party. After a 32-year hiatus, the party's official platform will include a plank calling for a commission to look at the possible return of the gold standard. There might be worse ideas than this, but they generally involve jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge because everybody else is doing it.

Economics is often a contentious subject, but economists agree about the gold standard -- it is a barbarous relic that belongs in the dustbin of history. As University of Chicago professor Richard Thaler points out, exactly zero economists endorsed the idea in a recent poll. What makes it such an idea non grata? It prevents the central bank from fighting recessions by outsourcing monetary policy decisions to how much gold we have -- which, in turn, depends on our trade balance and on how much of the shiny rock we can dig up. When we peg the dollar to gold we have to raise interest rates when gold is scarce, regardless of the state of the economy. This policy inflexibility was the major cause of the Great Depression, as governments were forced to tighten policy at the worst possible moment. It's no coincidence that the sooner a country abandoned the gold standard, the sooner it began recovering.

Why would anyone want to go back to the bad old days? The gold standard limited central banks from printing money when economies needed central banks to print money, and limited governments from running deficits when economies needed governments to run deficits. It was a devilish device for turning recessions into depressions. The answer is that some people aren't worried about depressions. Some people are worried about inflation. Even when none exists. To them, these fetters are the feature, not a bug.

It's a simple idea. If governments can't print or spend too much money, prices should be stable. Simple, but wrong. Consider the chart below, which shows headline CPI inflation under the gold standard from June 1919 to March 1933*. Not exactly an, ahem, golden age of price stability.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business...orlds-worst-economic-idea-in-2-charts/261552/

 

[Truth Detector]

Actually, it's been part of U.S. policy regardless of political party, i.e., self-entitlement, tax cuts, foreign intervention, bailing out Wall Street, etc. Hence,

http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-bush-policies-deficits-2010-6

In the end, Bush and Obama are two sides of the same coin.

....because you say so. But history, facts and economics would suggest you are gullible and uninformed.

The CBPP is a leftist organization dedicated to leftist DNC politics. Claiming that the Obama deficits are Bush's are about as dimwitted a claim as I have ever seen.

Democrats controlled the Congress from 2007 to 2010.

TAARP was a drop in the bucket compared to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 which added over a TRILLION to the deficits when interest is compounded in.

When Bush left office, the deficit was $641.81 billion; after Obama took office that deficit ballooned to 1.549 trillion thanks to the ARRA which did NOTHING to add any good paying jobs to the economy as evidenced by the latest pathetic employment data four years later.

This revisionist nonsense spamming the internet by leftist blogs is the fodder for gullible buffoons incapable of doing their own research or thinking.

 

[ralfy]

Wrong; but typical of those who are historically ignorant and pretend that despots, dictators and tyrants have no culpability in the world.

As for the “Gold” standard claims; I have heard nothing coherent or remotely credible to support the claims that not staying on the standard has caused all of our problems we face in the world.

Keeping the Gold Standard is tantamount to claiming that we should be a cash based society; it is dense and uniformed.

By the way, Democrats took us off the Gold standard.

Read and become informed:

Why the Gold Standard Is the World's Worst Economic Idea, in 2 Charts
Matthew O'Brien
Aug 26 2012, 9:52 AM ET

The greatest trick Ron Paul ever pulled was convincing the world that the gold standard leads to stable prices.

Well, maybe not the world. Just the Republican Party. After a 32-year hiatus, the party's official platform will include a plank calling for a commission to look at the possible return of the gold standard. There might be worse ideas than this, but they generally involve jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge because everybody else is doing it.

Economics is often a contentious subject, but economists agree about the gold standard -- it is a barbarous relic that belongs in the dustbin of history. As University of Chicago professor Richard Thaler points out, exactly zero economists endorsed the idea in a recent poll. What makes it such an idea non grata? It prevents the central bank from fighting recessions by outsourcing monetary policy decisions to how much gold we have -- which, in turn, depends on our trade balance and on how much of the shiny rock we can dig up. When we peg the dollar to gold we have to raise interest rates when gold is scarce, regardless of the state of the economy. This policy inflexibility was the major cause of the Great Depression, as governments were forced to tighten policy at the worst possible moment. It's no coincidence that the sooner a country abandoned the gold standard, the sooner it began recovering.

Why would anyone want to go back to the bad old days? The gold standard limited central banks from printing money when economies needed central banks to print money, and limited governments from running deficits when economies needed governments to run deficits. It was a devilish device for turning recessions into depressions. The answer is that some people aren't worried about depressions. Some people are worried about inflation. Even when none exists. To them, these fetters are the feature, not a bug.

It's a simple idea. If governments can't print or spend too much money, prices should be stable. Simple, but wrong. Consider the chart below, which shows headline CPI inflation under the gold standard from June 1919 to March 1933*. Not exactly an, ahem, golden age of price stability.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business...orlds-worst-economic-idea-in-2-charts/261552/

Actually, it's not a matter of staying with or leaving the gold standard that matters but the presence of a reserve currency that is causing problems for the U.S. Hence,

http://lexicon.ft.com/Term?term=Triffin-dilemma

That's why there are only superficial differences between politicians of both parties. All of them are ultimately dependent on a consumer spending economy.

If the U.S. dollar is replaced by another currency, then the country that holds that currency will suffer the same fate.

Finally, most don't know this, but the main source of money isn't governments but commercial banks:

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2012/10/22/commodities/myth-money-multiplier

That's why money isn't simply "printed" by governments arbitrarily or created through government spending but borrowed into existence as people and businesses make loans to banks. That's also why the largest component of money supply is unregulated derivatives, which now has a notional value of over a quadrillion dollars:

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012...he-size-of-the-global-derivatives-market.html

That's also why much of the global economy is controlled not by governments or central banks but by private corporations, especially financial:

http://www.newscientist.com/article...e-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world.html

which should not be surprising in light of the U.S. economy, as the "central bank" of that country is actually a private consortium of commercial banks:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_System

 

[ralfy]

....because you say so. But history, facts and economics would suggest you are gullible and uninformed.

The CBPP is a leftist organization dedicated to leftist DNC politics. Claiming that the Obama deficits are Bush's are about as dimwitted a claim as I have ever seen.

Democrats controlled the Congress from 2007 to 2010.

TAARP was a drop in the bucket compared to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 which added over a TRILLION to the deficits when interest is compounded in.

When Bush left office, the deficit was $641.81 billion; after Obama took office that deficit ballooned to 1.549 trillion thanks to the ARRA which did NOTHING to add any good paying jobs to the economy as evidenced by the latest pathetic employment data four years later.

This revisionist nonsense spamming the internet by leftist blogs is the fodder for gullible buffoons incapable of doing their own research or thinking.

It doesn't matter how you see the organization. The fact is that you didn't argue that the data it gave is wrong.