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Podcast: Hardly Working with Brent Orrell
Episode: Paul Ryan on Poverty and Opportunity in 21st Century America
Description: In the 1960s, President Lyndon B. Johnson began the so-called War on Poverty, expanding the federal government’s role in reducing poverty in the United States. At one level, this effort has been an overwhelming success: consumption poverty (the number of people who cannot afford basic goods and services) has fallen from 30 percent to 3 percent. At another level, the War on Poverty has failed, severe poverty continues to persist especially in terms of social dysfunction like unmarried births, educational failure, addiction and incarceration. The U.S. last reformed its welfare system in 1996, bringing significant new reductions to wel...