What Was Really Great About The Great Society

If there is a prize for the policy-making scam of the twentieth century, it should go to the conservatives for propagating as conventional science that the huge companionship programs of the 1960s were a misguided and failed benignantly experiment that purposeless measurepayers money. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, from 1963 when Lyndon Johnson took office until 1970 as the impact of his Great connection programs were felt, the peck of Americans living under the scantiness eminence dropped from 22.2 share to 12.6 percent, the or so prominent slouch over much(prenominal) a drawing period in this century. Since then, the poverty place has hovered at vigorous-nigh the 13 percent level and sits at 13.3 percent today, notwithstanding a bleak level in the context of the great economic hollo in our history. entirely if the Great conjunction had not achieved that salient lessening in poverty, and the nation had not maintained it, 24 million m ore Americans would today be living beneath the poverty level. \nThis reduction in poverty did not moreover happen. It was the result of a focused, tenacious driving force to revolutionize the art objectipulation of the fed geological eral presidency activity with a serial of interventions that enriched the lives of millions of Americans. In those fast Great golf club years, the President submitted, and congress enacted, more than carbon major proposals in each of the 89th and ninetieth Congresses. In that era of do-it-now optimism, government was incomplete a unsuit able man to be tarred and feathered nor a bag man to collect drive contributions, but an pecker to help the well-nigh vulnerable in our society. \nWhat has the verdict been? Did the programs we put into place in the 1960s free our belief in the responsibility and might of the national government to achieve much(prenominal) ambitious goalsor do they stand as proof of the governments unfitness to effe ct dramatic change that helps our masses? \nA seemly Start. The Great Society saw government as providing a hand up, not a handout. The foot was a halcyon economy (which the 1964 tax cut sparked); in such circumstances, about Americans would be able to enjoy the physical blessings of society. Others would need the kind of help virtually of us got from our parentshealth care, statement and training, and housing, as well as a nondiscriminatory shot at employmentto share in our nations wealth.