Why America Lost the War on Poverty - and How to Win It, A Review:
Frank Stricker tells us, currently some 38 million people in the United States are living in poverty according to the government. This book is a remarkable piece of research work. It surveys and evaluates U.S. Government policies to reduce poverty from the mid-twentieth century to the early years of the present century, covering eleven administrations - from that of Harry Truman to that of George W. Bush. Of the various causes of poverty, one leading source is unemployment. The author makes it clear that so long as Capital is in command, Labor will have to face a permanent degree of unemployment. For neither corporate employers nor bankers will tolerate full employment, as the former want wages kept as low as possible and the latter are determined to avoid inflation.
So it is a sad story of sometimes serious but often half-hearted campaigns carried out against an unremitting opposition. The book begins with a list of seven ways of reducing poverty (the favorite method being stimulating economic growth, but also job training, raising the minimum wage, providing government jobs paying above poverty wages, direct payments and services to the poor, and so on). The success of failure of these various methods is weighed throughout and the book ends with 17 recommendations to eliminate poverty. European countries have shown that poverty can be virtually eliminated without destroying capitalism. So the continued refusal to eliminate it here leaves one with the impression that there is an element of just plain cruelty in our society.
Why America Lost the War on Poverty - and How to Win It by Frank Stricker, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2007. 345 pp. with notes and index.