Nothing the government does works! That is a statement that is timeless and not confined t0 a specific place or form of government. Some programs merely waste money. Others do great harm because they alter the incentives and behavior patterns of people.
Nothing has been more wasteful or harmful than the so-called “War on Poverty” and the programs that it has spawned. Chuck Roger sums up recent experience thusly:
Notice what the title of the table points out. With 2010 “anti-poverty spending” at nearly double the 2000 level, you’d think that “poverty” would have been reduced. Yet as thegraph shows, redistribution of taxpayer cash to poor recipients as has more than doubled since 1962. The graph also shows that redistributed taxpayer dollars allocated to “anti-poverty” health care have exploded since the 1960s. By these measures, “anti-poverty spending” does nothing to reduce poverty.
Read Mr. Roger’s analysis here.
