Michael D. Tanner, a longtime poverty researcher for the libertarian Cato Institute and a National Review Online columnist, is rethinking some things. In the preface to his new book, he writes that some friends of his have “rais[ed] my consciousness” on certain issues. Racism and the legacy of slavery, for example, are bigger obstacles to success, even in a free market, than he had truly grappled with before.
In the book's early pages he also writes that government spending on the poor isn't totally useless. True, the official poverty rate hasn't fallen much since the War on Poverty began — but that measure ignores most of the income people get from the very safety-net programs the War on Poverty created. With that income included, the poverty rate has fallen substantially: by 23.5 percentage points between 1960 and 2010, by one measure (which also corrects flaws in the government's standard inflation adjustment). It's hard to say what would have happened without those programs; maybe more people would have lifted themselves out of poverty if the government hadn't stepped in. Nonetheless, it seems clear these efforts are alleviating a lot of material need.
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