Wild Weekend in NYC for LBJ's Great Grandkids

by Robert Wenzel
Economic Policy Journal

Recently by Robert Wenzel: Roubini's Off-the-Wall History of Financial Crashes

Some 31 people were shot in New York City between early Saturday and early Monday – part of a 24-hour run of shooting victims.

Public schooling, escalating minimum wage laws and the encouragement of fatherless families, were all things intensified under LBJ's "Great Society" program and "War on Poverty." They have made for a mad cocktail of out of control kids.

By the end of the Johnson Administration, 226 out of 252 major legislative requests (over a four-year period) had been met, Federal Aid to the poor rose from $9.9 billion in 1960 to $30 billion.

President Johnson's first ever public reference to the 'Great Society' took place during a speech to students on May 7, 1964, at Ohio University. "And with your courage and with your compassion and your desire, we will build the Great Society. It is a Society where no child will go unfed, and no youngster will go unschooled."

Economist Thomas Sowell explained in 2004 what LBJ's programs did:

August 20th marks the 40th anniversary of one of the major turning points in American social history. That was the date on which President Lyndon Johnson signed legislation creating his "War on Poverty" program in 1964.

Never had there been such a comprehensive program to tackle poverty at its roots, to offer more opportunities to those starting out in life, to rehabilitate those who had fallen by the wayside, and to make dependent people self-supporting. Its intentions were the best. But we know what road is paved with good intentions.

In the liberal vision, slums bred crime. But brand-new government housing projects almost immediately became new centers of crime and quickly degenerated into new slums. Many of these projects later had to be demolished. Unfortunately, the assumptions behind those projects were not demolished, but live on in other disastrous programs...The black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and discrimination, began rapidly disintegrating in the liberal welfare state that subsidized unwed pregnancy and changed welfare from an emergency rescue to a way of life.

Government has no clue as to how to raise kids, find them jobs, educate them or house them. It is a myth designed to further justify tax increases. Government has done nothing but create the most violent, gun-toting, out-of-control kids in the history of mankind.

It is time to ditch government "help" in the raising of children, that needs to be returned to the private charity level and the family level. Further, minimum wage laws need to be abolished so these kids can get jobs and learn basic skills. Otherwise, LBJ's great grandkids will be toting more guns and we will all end up ducking for cover, from time to time.

Reprinted with permission from Economic Policy Journal.

September 7, 2011

©2011 Economic Policy Journal

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