The welfare state grows as self-sufficiency declines

For the past 50 years, the government’s annual poverty rate has hardly changed at all. According to the US census Bureau, 15% of Americans still live in poverty, roughly the same rate as the mid-1960s when the War on Poverty was just starting.

After adjusting for inflation, federal and state welfare spending today is 16 times greater than it was when President Lyndon B. Johnson launched the War on Poverty. If converted into cash, current means-tested spending is five times the amount needed to eliminate all official poverty in the US