Talk:War on Poverty

$27.8 trillion

The government cannot give to anybody anything

that the government does not first take from somebody else.

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The cost of the War on Poverty has been enormous.

Between 1965 and 2016,

welfare spending by federal and state governments

cost taxpayers roughly $27.8 trillion in constant FY 2016 dollars.

By contrast, the cost to the U.S. government for all military wars

from the American Revolution to the present is $8 trillion in FY 2016 dollars.

"You cannot legislate the poor into freedom

by legislating the wealthy out of freedom.

What one person receives without working for,

another person must work for without receiving.

The government cannot give to anybody anything

that the government does not first take from somebody else.

When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work

because the other half is going to take care of them,

and when that other half gets the idea that it does no good to work

because somebody else is going to get what they work for,

that, my dear friend, is the beginning of the end of any nation.

   You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."

On March 3, 2014, as Chairman of the Budget Committee of the House of Representatives,

Paul Ryan released his "The War on Poverty: 50 Years Later" report,

asserting that some of 92 federal programs designed to help lower-income Americans

have not provided the relief intended

and that there is little evidence that these efforts have been successful.

The true cost of welfare or aid to the poor is largely unknown

because the spending is fragmented into myriad programs.

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