Talk:War on poverty

i'll do it...later
hey. i wrote my senior seminar paper on the the war on poverty, and i think i am competent to revise/re-write this article. umm, i'll do it when i'm done with my masters thesis (hopefully by august. 24.86.215.144 20:18, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Article does not mention San Jose, CA had a healthy Model Cities program which paid citizens to be involved in community meetings. One was the Olinder Neighborhood who worked together to create 2 parks in the area, one with a Children's Theatre which was still going strong last I knew in 2015. It is probable still is going strong. I personally knew several members of the group who worked with Model Cities and were very proud of their contributions to their community. I feel the article would benefit by exploring the positives of the program. I personally am sorry it was taken away by the politicians who preferred not to have to deal with the citizens in their own communities. ThinkingL2 (talk) 17:36, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

Talk prior to mid-2005
Deleted a small sentence that was slapped onto the end after the Stub that said "The War on Poverty was important". Kade 22:54, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

This article reads like poorly written conservative propaganda. No mention is made of the successes or even of the attempts to reduce poverty in the United States. The Campaign Results section needs work. The Cato Institute should not be linked here. DirectorStratton 19:36, Jun 9, 2005 (UTC)

Attempts to reduce poverty that were not successes were failures, so you advocate to include those? What successes can be attributed to the War on Poverty? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.184.56.35 (talk) 19:09, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

Needs review by a competent authority
I don't believe this article conveys the true spirit of the War on Poverty. The idea was to get people off of welfare through job training programs and attracting businesses to the center cities; it thus has a lot in common with the 1996 act. It failed primarily because it was set up to work independently of the existing power structure, and thus stepped on political toes.

Please feel free to add to/rewrite this article. Be Bold! DirectorStratton 01:31, September 5, 2005 (UTC)

This is one of the weaker articles I have found
I would tend to agree that this article has a horrendous conservative slant. The entire article seems to be written as a conservative critique, and provides very little information as to the actual substance of the war on poverty itself. More depressing is the lack of any kind of historical or political context information. Unfortunately, if I had the information to offer corrections myself I would not have accessed this article in the first place. I sincerely hope that someone with the proper information will devote their attention to this article in the very near future. In the mean time, I will attempt to research the issue and offer what I feel to be the most solid information regarding it as I pursue graduate work in political science. Please could someone in 'the know' save this poor wayward article?

regards 66.190.68.29 03:53, 6 October 2005 (UTC)cfoster (caseyfoster05@gmail.com)

Why Conservative?
I always thought that LBJ was a Democrat, and opposed to conservatism. It also took Ronald Reagan most of his presidency to dismantle it. To my mind, the War on Poverty was well intentioned and was also applauded by many Socialists. As the article states, poverty levels were dramtically affected by the these measures. This is an important article. So can we fix it up and then remove the POV alert? Wallie 13:04, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

You completely missed his point. Yes, the War on Poverty is generally considered a triumph for liberals. What Foster was trying to say was this topic is being presented with a severe conservative bias, and I totally agree. The arguments and citations under the criticism section are generally of low quality, and I had to completely delete one of them. I thought about deleting the Anderson argument, as the reference is basically a huge ad hominem attack against Paul Krugman, a Princeton University Professor in Economics. The part of his argument mentioned in this entry is probably his strongest evidence, which is pretty sad, since it's purely anecdotal evidence selected from his own personal experience. Is there some Wikipedia standard on the quality of cited material? If so, that whole criticism should be deleted. Danielx (talk) 01:38, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Please feel free to add to/rewrite this article. Be Bold! DirectorStratton 03:41, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes, the War on Poverty is generally considered a triumph for liberals...huh? You mean a legislative triumph? Or perhaps you mean that liberals consider it a triumph? Certainly you don't mean it's actually had the effect of reducing poverty...

Revision December 2005
Well, I'm certainly no competent authority, but I think the article should at least follow this structure: (1) Intro: defining WOP and giving context of its place in American history (2) Background - poverty in US at the time, possibly also priorities of Johnson Admin at the time (3) Administration of the WOP and effects, if possible, (4) Criticism, (5) References/Sources. Kaisershatner 20:03, 5 December 2005 (UTC)..

This is awful
Okay, I was the one who wrote above that he did his senior seminar paper on the War on Poverty. I still haven't come over here and written this thing. Umm. I'll do it later? Zweifel 02:58, 11 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Okay, I'll do it now. I'm going to cut and paste a lot of my paper into Wikipedia, and remove all the stupid citations and stuff.
 * What I am worried about is violating the WP:NOR policy. Look, I got an A on this paper at a good school, and in many ways it's based on others' research.  I've just synthesized a lot of it and added a lot of quotes from Johnson and others.  Second, going through and formatting my FIFTY FOUR footnotes seems oppressive.  I will take out my "analysis and conclusion" section because, even though my conclusions are a tad obvious, they still are distinctly original research.  I will put my bibliography at the end.
 * Finally, I only really analyzed the topic to 1968. Some other time I could go back to Lemann and write up some thing for Nixon et al., but not now.  Someone else has to do it.Zweifel 02:58, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Gah! This is goiing to take forever.  I reverted it and put what I had written on my userpage User:Zweifel/War_on_Poverty.  I'll do it when I get home.  Maybe. Zweifel 03:35, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

developemntgateway.org external link
This link: War on Poverty Resources

Was added by an editor whose only contributions have been to promote World Bank Group organizations (The Development Gateway Foundation was started by the World Bank). We have recently uncovered significant edits promoting this group of organizations (see this WikiProject Spam discussion). In the interest of our neutral point of view policy and conflict of interest guideline I've moved the link here for other editors to consider. Thanks. -- Siobhan Hansa 13:04, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Not Over
I didn't read the entire article yet but I notice it refers to the War on Poverty in the past tense its not over--209.181.16.93 (talk) 16:34, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Peabody Essex Museum
The War on Poverty is alive and well at one of the richest museums in America in 2013, where The president of the Peabody Essex Museum Dan Monroe makes $578,254.00 a year with full benefits while all the guards are part time with no benefits making $9.00 an hour. In 2011, the Total revenue of the Peabody Essex Museum was $53,044,354 & the Total Functional Expenses were $33,021,331 leaving a $20,000,000 spread to pay more than a poverty wage to the security guards, gift shop retail clerks, ticket sellers, catering staff, the Building Maintenance department & janitors  of the Peabody Essex Museum.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.63.254.80 (talk) 13:34, 15 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Please don't spam this onto multiple pages and don't use WP as a public forum. The source you are using is not a reliable source for the presenation you are making.  We are not allowed to perform original research on WP.  Arzel (talk) 15:23, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Walmart
In 2001, the average wage for a Walmart Sales Clerk was $8.23 per hour, or $13,861 a year, while the federal poverty line for a family of three was $14,630. Walmart founder Sam Walton once said, "I pay low wages. I can take advantage of that. We're going to be successful, but the basis is a very low-wage, low-benefit model of employment."
 * This is very old information. What is the relavence here?  Arzel (talk) 15:24, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Assuming $8.23 is correct, at 40 hours/week that's $17,118.40 for the year, above the poverty line for a family of three (assuming the rest of your information is correct).

Does have evidence that the Sam Walton quote above is anything more than a myth? I notice it's spread quite far on the Internet, especially among leftwing websites and blogs, but the "sources" I found all say stuff like, "Sam Walton once said..." or "Sam Walton famously said..." - but it never includes a time, place, to whom he said it, etc. No original source. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.184.56.35 (talk) 19:26, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

Something to do with negative income tax?
Just wondering... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.102.26.149 (talk) 20:17, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

NPOV tag
While I agree with many of the criticisms, I have to say that the extensive nature of the criticism puts this past WP:NPOV. Criticism should always be a small portion of an article, because it's essentially others' reactions to the article's subject, rather than being part of the subject itself. When nearly half of the article is criticism or responses thereto, the article's giving undue weight to controversy; let's reduce the controversy/criticism to a proportional level until/unless the rest gets expanded substantially. Nyttend (talk) 03:53, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * What would you suggest removing, in specific? MilesMoney (talk) 23:27, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Ryan's corrections to the document
We need a secondary source that declares that Ryan made corrections to the original document. We can't use a primary source for that claim, as it would violate WP:NOR -  Cwobeel   (talk)  17:41, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Is anyone embarrassed by the inclusion of this line in the article?
"...Conservative claims that the OEO poverty programs were nothing but a waste of money are preposterous ... Eleven of the 12 programs that OEO launched in the mid-'60s are alive, well and funded at an annual rate exceeding $10 billion; apparently legislators believe they're still working."

So we're winning the War on Poverty because Congress continues to fund it? Or the poverty programs are not a waste of money because Congress continues to fund it?

So we were winning the war in Vietnam for many years, because Congress continued to fund it for all of those years, and we lost only because we quit funding the war. And it wasn't a waste of money.

In fact, following the logic in the quote, anything Congress has continued to fund over a period of time has been money well spent. Like the war in Iraq. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.184.56.35 (talk) 19:07, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

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The chart called "Poverty Rate 1959 to 2011" needs to go back at least another decade
Between 1949 and 1965, the poverty rate fell from 35% to 17%. That's quite an amazing accomplishment. And that was before the war on poverty began. This needs to be included in that chart. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FszQelEQ2KY

71.182.249.222 (talk) 19:33, 2 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Well, at least I moved it up to the correct section. But it seems to show that poverty was already falling before the "war" against it began. After that, it fell for only two more years and then remained steady: going up again and then down, but not by much.


 * We might want to have a section on the pros and cons of the war. Or at least a controversy section where supporters say that how effective it was and why, contrasted with critics saying whatever they say. --Uncle Ed (talk) 15:05, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

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Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:War on Cancer which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 22:17, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

N-gram shows upper-cased name
Here is the n-gram showing that upper-casing of the title is correct. Randy Kryn (talk) 01:04, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Oops, I didn't see that move discussion and moved this page to "War on Poverty". Feel free to revert it back (although I agree, I think War on Poverty is appropriate). Llightex (talk) 02:49, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Military conflict infobox.
Here is an example of something that should not be added to the article. jp×g 01:25, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Gender Welfare and Poverty
— Assignment last updated by Shakaigaku Obasan (talk) 00:32, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

Poverty, Justice, and Human Capabilities Assignment
I would like to add to this Wikipedia article on the war on poverty. I would like to provide more information about the implications of the war on poverty on modern policies and safety nets. I would also like to provide more historical context for what inspired the war on poverty. I’m interested in investigating how Johnson’s legislation addressed the multifaceted issues of American poverty and whether his economic policies addressed disadvantaged groups equally. I've come up with 10 citations I would like to add to the content of this article--these are listed on my user page. Efloden (talk) 01:44, 15 September 2023 (UTC)