Straight Truth
John McCain: “We are in a recession. The numbers indicate that. American families are hurting. … Let’s start out with the acceptance that action has to be taken. We need to do a lot of things. I have no doubt President Johnson was serious and had the very best of intentions when he declared the war on poverty in America. But the army he enlisted was mostly drawn from the ranks of government bureaucracies. Government has a role to play in helping people who through no fault of their own are having a hard time. But government can’t create good and lasting jobs outside of government. It can’t pay lost wages. It can’t dig coal from the earth. It can’t buy you a house or send all your kids to college. It can’t do your work for you.”
posted by Daily Observer at 11:33 PM
2 Comments:
government can create good and lasting jobs outside of government through a judicious use of different policies. Tax cuts helped in the 60s--jobs grew rapidly. And the rich did not take as big a chunk as they do now, so there was a bit more for those at the bottom. The problem with the war on poverty was precisely that it did not aim to create jobs in government and out of it for the poor. It hoped that economic growth would do the trick. Growth was pretty good in the 60s--way better than in the 2000s. But it was not enough.
Re McCain. The gov. can create or help to create jobs in the private sector. It does it when it uses the right budgetary and monetary policy. In the 60s tax cuts actually helped boom economic growth and job creation. IT worked that time--unlike the 2000s. But less income was going to the very rich that time--more was available for decent jobs and more consumption. Much of the 2000s recovery was built in debt.
The problem with specific war on poverty programs was that they did not create good jobs in goverment or outside of it. That was not the aim and that was a mistake. There are a million jobs we need to do in government and out and government can use some of the huge income chunks going to the rich to do them.
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