Who Remembers America's war on poverty

Poverty

President Lyndon B. Johnson while in office decided to take a stand and begin the "War on Poverty" introducing initiatives in order to improve education, health, skills and jobs, but somewhere along the lines the "War on Poverty" became the "War on Terror". Although the war on terror is helping create thousands of jobs for American citizens we are pushing ourselves further into debt. America is essentially trying to learn how to swim while carrying weights.

 

Even though we have been able to hold our own since the 1960s we still have much more work that needs to be done. We need to have more citizens to invest their precious time into donating more money into charities such as the Food for the Hungry, National Alliance to end Homelessness, and CEDARS. By citizens I mean the substantially wealthy to many times  have walked by and seen a Corvette or Porsche pull up next to the poor  will not even look in his/her direction. Majority of people that donate to the poor are hardworking middle class citizens.

 

Now it is not fair for me to say that we have not made any progression since 1964 when the War on Poverty was first began. But in 2012 49.7 million Americans were struggling with the economic and social hardships of living below the poverty line, including 16.4 million children. Now the most terrifying is that 16.4 million children are struggling with poverty in the U.S. alone. It has been proven by the Census Bureau that children who re born into poverty have a higher risk of being in poverty as an adult. This includes single parent homes, minority homes, and families who have only achieved their high school diplomas.  These are future generations and yet there out here struggling to eat on daily basis while many of us complain out what happens in our everyday lives. America is supposed to be the land of opportunity yet we have very little opportunities to offer.

 

Once we establish who in our nation is poor is when we can officially begin the steps in order to fight poverty effectively.  The Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) accurately measures poverty size. Allowing us to become a few steps closer.