50 Years Later, War on Poverty Is a Mixed Bag

The article "50 Years Later, War on Poverty Is a Mixed Bag" by Annie Lowrey focuses on what the government has done to precent poverty from reaching a higher level, but also how poverty hasn't changed drastically from fifty years ago. For example, Annie states, "There is broad consensus that the social welfare programs created since the New Deal have hugely improved living conditions for low-income Americans. At the same time, in recent decades, most of the gains from the private economy have gone to those at the top of the income ladder." Both political parties have argued over what would be the best solution for the poverty rate or even better, to eliminate it. According to James P. Zijak of the University of Kentucky, "for poverty to decrease, the low-wage labor market needs to improve." "We need strong economic growth with gains widely distributed. If the private labor market won't step up to the plate, we're going to have to strengthen programs to help these people get by and survive." According to President Obama, he calls this inequality "the defining challenge of our time."While he pushes for expansion of the states Medicaid programs for for the poor, conservatives such as Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin believe that the government should focus less on the support of the poor and more so on economic job opportunities. According to economists, the poverty rate has dropped to 16 percent from 26 percent, which is where it was at around the late 1960s.One thing for certain is that high rates of poverty have been an ongoing problem in American society. Suggestions are made throughout this article as solutions to help decrease the poverty rate such as, "If Congress approved a proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour from its current level of $7.25, it would reduce the poverty rate of working-age Americans by 1.7 percentage points, lifting about five million people our of poverty", according to research by Arindrajit Dube of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst."