This post is about two internal wars our federal government
has undertaken on in the last fifty years -- the war on poverty and the war on drugs.
The war on poverty was invented by Lyndon Johnson with the
intent to eliminate poverty in this country -- a noble goal. There are multiple
problems with the premise. First it ignores human nature. When you give people
something for nothing they do not appreciate it and abuse it. Second the
government has to administer the program. As soon as that happens the bureaucracy
becomes the objective. Government workers main job is to keep their government
jobs -- not to care about what they were hired to do. Third on the list of
negatives is that money the government spends is taken out of our economy, thus
less job creation and fewer opportunities to get out of poverty. As for
success, there is none. In 1964 the poverty rate was 27% and now it is 29% and
climbing.
The war on drugs is similar. It was instigated by Richard
Nixon in a speech to the United Nations in 1971. The press jumped on board and
invented the phrase war on drugs. This has been just as successful as
prohibition was to get rid of alcohol, but we still have not come to our senses
yet about the drug ban. We changed our laws to make drugs harder to sell and distribute.
What that did immediately was drive drugs further underground, which makes illicit
drugs more expensive and puts more people in the drug business to manufacture
more drugs. On the social side of the drug war, we put a lot of sick people in
jail which makes them more committed to drug use and better criminals.
Will someone please get the federal government to stop
helping us.
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