The Great Society: An Introduction

"At the end of fiscal 2008, which came on September 30 of last year, the American national debt stood at $9.6 trillion. That sum is, perhaps, quite beyond the imagining of most people. It is, after all, 250 million times the average per capita income. Even the total fortunes of the entire Forbes 400 list add up to less than 15 percent of it. To use a journalistic...

"But the real story should be the degree to which the federal government’s War on Poverty has been a complete failure. Taxpayers have poured trillions of dollars into means-tested programs, yet the data show no positive results. Indeed, it’s quite likely that the programs have backfired."

"Rasmussen Reports released poll results yesterday showing that 23% of Americans say they receive some form of cash benefits from the government. This is remarkably close to the truth. As The Heritage Foundation’s 2010 Index of Dependence on Government documents, 21% of the total U.S. population (64.3 million people) receive some level of assistance from...

"If the progressive label seems less radical today, it is only because progressivism is less well known than its liberal progeny. It was initially an academic phenomenon far removed from American politics. Particularly in the post–Civil War American university, professors — many of whom had obtained their graduate training in German universities, and whose thought...

"Today marks the 46th anniversary of the War on Poverty. On March 16, 1964, Pres. Lyndon Johnson announced a new government mobilization that he claimed would yield 'total victory' against poverty in the United States. Johnson promised his 'war' would be an 'investment' that would 'return its cost manifold to the entire economy.'

"A president presides over an unpopular war, while pursuing domestic goals that are the centerpiece of his actual interest. His is forced to choose between focusing his attention on development overseas, and pushing through major domestic programs that will dramatically expand the purview of government which does he choose? Barack Obama in 2010? Or Lyndon Baines...

"One reporter dared to ask House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Oct. 22 where the Constitution grants Congress authority to require individuals to buy health insurance. An obviously annoyed Speaker Pelosi replied: 'Are you serious? Are you serious?'

It is a very serious matter indeed. The speaker's vexed response reveals the extent to...

"It’s time such people learned that stomping one’s feet, shouting demands, and grabbing other people’s things isn’t really how wealth is created, or an especially dignified way for grown men and women to behave."

"My objection to the Great Society is not primarily an object to its economic and social aspects, though I agree that these are, by and large, sufficiently objectionable. My objection to the Great Society runs deeper. It goes to the very idea itself, and it holds not only against Presidents Johnson's Great Society, but also Governor...

"Neither the media nor most of our educational institutions question the assumptions behind the War on Poverty. 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...

"The 1912 presidential election showcased four impressive candidates who engaged in a remarkable debate about the future of American politics. Besides William Howard Taft, the incumbent Republican president, the campaign was joined by Eugene Debs, the labor leader from Indiana, who ran on the Socialist Party ticket; the irrepressible Theodore Roosevelt, who bolted...

"Households in all age groups have made gains compared with their predecessors over the course of many decades, but the incomes of the oldest households have risen four times as sharply as those of the youngest ones. As a result, incomes of the oldest households, which have been lower than those of younger households, are catching up.

In households headed by adults younger than 35, the...

This chart shows the amount of money the federal government spent per household from 1965 to 2010, including spending projections up to the year 2020.

"In 2009, households headed by adults ages 65 and older possessed 42% more median net worth (assets minus debt) than households headed by their same-aged counterparts had in 1984. During this same period, the wealth of households headed by younger adults moved in the opposite direction. In 2009, households headed by adults younger than 35 had 68% less wealth than households of their same-aged...

 "Over the next 10 years, the number of individuals enrolled in Medicare will increase drastically. There are more than 77 million baby boomers set to turn 65 starting in 2011. This will dramatically increase the number of individuals who pay for their health care using taxpayer dollars. Furthermore, the heavily subsidized coverage will increase overall demand...

"Median income is a measure of what is happening in the middle of the population. Poverty statistics reflect what is happening at the bottom, and they tell a familiar story of changes in economic status for young and old.

Among households headed by adults younger than 35, the share with income below the poverty line has jumped since 1967. Among households headed by adults ages 65 and...

"Thirty-seven million Americans live below the official poverty line. Millions more struggle each month to pay for basic necessities, or run out of savings when they lose their jobs or face health emergencies. Poverty imposes enormous costs on society. The lost potential of children raised in poor households, the lower productivity and earnings of poor adults, the...

"Did the increase in expenditures and expansion of government antipoverty programs accelerate the decline in the poverty rate as President Johnson had anticipated? Incredible as it may seem, almost the opposite occurred. Just as government spending on the various antipoverty programs accelerated in the late 1960s, progress against poverty came to a grinding halt....

"This article analyzes the nature and timing of Medicare's origin. My objective is not only to chronicle Medicare's evolution but to evaluate its history in a consistent theoretical framework. Based on thousands of pages of original congressional documents--House and Senate hearings, House and Senate reports, the Congressional Record, and other sources cited below...

"The number of Americans who pay taxes continues to shrink—and the United States is close to the point at which half of the population will not pay taxes for government benefits they receive. In 2009, 64.3 million Americans depended on the government (read: their fellow citizens) for their daily housing, food, and health care. Starting in 2015, the Social...

"As a philosophical tradition, progressivism in its most complete form developed as a 'new liberalism' for a new century—updating the American liberal tradition from its Jeffersonian, small-government, republican roots best suited for the agrarian economy of the nation’s founding era to a more democratic and modern liberalism capable of checking rising corporate...

"Progressivism has always found expressions both within and outside the major political parties, beginning with the early protest movements of the populists and other third party insurgencies to the transformative candidacies of William Jennings Bryan, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Roosevelt. As Herbert Croly, co-founder of The New...

Part 1: "A product of the conflicting ambitions of the men who shaped it, the War on Poverty was ill-fated--but its fate need not be that of all anti-poverty programs."

Part 2: "An inside look at how personal enmity, political calculation,...

"In this conversation, President Johnson offered assured Virginia Congressman Porter Hardy (D) that the governors’ veto amendment to the Economic Opportunity Act would prevent the community action program from circumventing local governmental authority. For supporters of the community action principle, such circumvention had been the point of the program."

"Throughout the period leading up to the passage of the Economic Opportunity Act, Lyndon Johnson frequently spoke of the War on Poverty in terms of improving the work habits of the poor and providing them with job and training opportunities. Conservatives were frequent targets of these appeals. This excerpt of a Johnson conversation with Texas Congressman George...

"Following a discussion of the balance between program cuts and a possible tax increase in the next budget cycle, President Johnson mentioned a protest that a group of poverty activists from Syracuse, New York had staged at his Texas ranch. Mayor Daley, who a few moments before had urged the president to focus on job creation as the core of the anti-poverty effort...

"In this brief excerpt from a call the day after his victory in the 1964 presidential election, Lyndon Johnson outlines his agenda to Pennsylvania Senator Joseph S. Clark. In a moment of particularly sweeping ambition, the president compares his poverty program to the abolition of slavery."

This extensive collection of recordings covers LBJ's conversations with various people about topics such as civil rights, the War on Poverty and Vietnam.

"President Johnson and Representative Phil Landrum of Georgia (the floor leader for the Economic Opportunity Act in the House of Representatives) discuss the attempt by a group of Catholic congressmen to block the Economic Opportunity Act in the House Education and Labor Committee. The Act would remain blocked unless sections of Title II were re-written to include...

Thomas E. Woods, Jr. is a senior fellow at the Mises Institute and author of the New York Times bestseller, Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed. In this lecture, Dr. Woods discusses the incentives of the welfare state established by Lyndon Johnson and Great Society legislation.

This act established several Great Society programs, including the Job Corps, work training and experience programs, work study programs, community action programs, adult basic education programs, Voluntary Assistance Program for Needy Children, and assistance for the rural and migrant poor. It also created the Office of Economic Opportunity to administer these...

This Act was passed to "strenghten the educational resources of our colleges and universities and to provide financial assistance to students in postsecondary and higher education."

"The Hart-Cellar Act abolished the national origins quota system that had structured American immigration policy since the 1920s, replacing it with a preference system that focused on immigrants' skills and family relationships with citizens or residents of the U.S. Numerical restrictions on visas were set at 170,000 per year, not including immediate relatives of U...

A timeline of Lyndon B. Johnson's Life, emphasizing events of importance in the former President's life.

"On September 29, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act into law. The act called for the creation of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) as separate independent entities."

"This act was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on July 30, 1965, in Independence, MO. It established Medicare, a health insurance program for the elderly, and Medicaid, a health insurance program for the poor."

Often cited as one of the seminal writings on welfare's effects on the family, this piece describes the state of the black family in the mid-1960s. Chapter 2 of this document specifically relates the breakdown of the black family to the rise of the welfare...

"Who were the best and worst U.S. presidents, and what criteria should be used to make a meaningful comparison? Presidents are often judged by their personal charisma, intellect, oratory skills or management style—but are these traits the most important ones for a president to possess? Couldn’t a very intelligent, well-spoken, charming taskmaster, who served during...

"The winners write the history, and the winning states especially so. Thomas Woods, however, sets out to write a primer on American history from a different point of view, one that doesn't glorify centralization and intervention.The result is the only primer on American history that is heavily informed by the economics of the Austrian School. It was also a New York Times bestseller and one of...