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[quote=fairlaker;33102269]Culture had nothing to do with it. Unless you meant the culture of greed among the cowboy capitalists of Wall Street and the culture of simple ignorance embodied in George W Bush.
You left out the part about the Koch brothers.
You're welcome.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Army_Guy
Help from the government is seen as a hammock and not as a parachute now.
That's why things are the way they are. The massive failure of his War on Poverty has cost us so much money and devastated the black family beyond repair.
The cynical side of me says it was done on purpose, what's better way to ensure that generations of poor folks on government handouts will vote democrat?
Seriously? You have ways to reduce the cost of safety-net programs by 98% and you are just sitting on them? What sort of person would do THAT?
No, we accomplished nothing in Vietnam. The lives of millions of people have been bettered by safety-net programs. There is no comparison at all.
The agenda is to help the sick and the needy. The ideology is that propounded by Jesus of Nazareth. Among a lot of other poeple. You don't seem to have gotten the memo.
Now, why would you have to go drag your fundamentalist rightwing religion into this and try to force your Christian beliefs down the throats of everybody else. How rightwing and neanderthal. Separation of church and state. It's 2014, not the age of the Crusades. Jerry Falwell would be proud of you.
This being said, much of my reading has shown that for people who've lived in this sort of institutionalized poverty all their lives, they have little concept of how to pull themselves out of it. When one cannot imagine a better life for themselves, how can they take steps to get there? For example, to people who lived in the Robert Taylor Homes, an average middle-class existence must have looked as unattainable as flapping their arms and flying to the moon.
Once upon a time, in the 70's, I worked with several single mothers who lived in the Robert Taylor Homes. What I envisioned as the start of a career, they envisioned as personal triumph, against all odds. I am white and had more opportunities than these women, regardless of time and effort.
All of those full time jobs were eventually eliminated by technology. What remains pays less than those jobs did in the 70's, adjusted for inflation.
Back to the OP, I think this is really what LBJ's Great Society came to....well-meaning (and in many ways patronizing) social programs that tried to address poverty without fully addressing the underlying institutional racism that still existed. Then, if any program worked, someone had to mess with it (and in most cases, a well-meaning way) causing inadvertent and negative consequences.
I think a secondary piece is that no-one could have predicted the collapse of American manufacturing, combined with the offshoring of what used to be good pay and benefit jobs. This had the effect of eviscerating the middle class, while increasing the proportional wealth of the rich, and increasing the size of poor/working class cohort. America's economy and industrial base has fundamentally changed since The Great Society was launched, something no-one could have foreseen.
The combo of offshoring and technology removed the lower rungs on the middle class ladder.
A "Great Society" was one where anyone could achieve what they wanted, regardless of where they grew up, how much money they had, or whatever color their skin was. Many Americans today now know this is a myth - the middle class is vanishing, and the divide between rich and poor is widening (with visible racial gaps here too). And the prognosis for the future is not promising, assuming people continue to accumulate debt to get stuff and homes and vehicles they cannot afford.
Really, the idea of the "Great Society" is dead, killed by money/wealth/materialism becoming the main motivating factor for a society.
Can we add shareholder activism to the list. When the likes of a Carl Icahn targets a company it's a foregone conclusion he is going to do whatever it takes to maximize shareholder ROI. And it usually begins with the announcement of massive layoffs. If the activist cannot squeeze blood from a turnip, he's going to sell off its assets, one by one. Large corporations who do not protect themselves from shareholder activists become targets.
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