Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page started out his working life with Upward Bound in southeastern Ohio.
In his January 12, 2014, column, he admits that the program’s design was faulty–no follow-up.
He points out that other elements of Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty worked better:
- Medicare
- Medicaid
- food stamp expansion
- subsidized school lunches
- the earned income credit
After this recitation comes what I found the most astonishing part of his column:
“A half-century later, I can see the old poverty problem with a new clarity.
“For one thing, I can see that the best poverty fighter is a robust economy like the one we had in the 1990’s, when poverty and crime rates declined to the lowest since the LBJ era.”
“…A half-century later, I can seee the old poverty problem with a new clarity. For one thing, I can see that the best poverty fighter is a robust economy like the one we had in the 1990s, when poverty and crime raters declined to their lowest…”
Are you kidding me?
That was the start of the dot.com boom and bust and the start of the housing boom that led to the eventual bust.
Poverty is not fought by creating bubbles.
Hogwash.