Pull Up the Roots
Veteran
What? No it's not. You're trying to have it both ways by trying to discredit anti-poverty programs as harmful while distancing yourself from the obvious implication that they caused poverty to worsen. That's not me engaging in semantics games, it's you dodging the consequences of your own argument. I'm engaging with the cause-and-effect logic you laid out, not inventing claims you didn't make.
You're also acting like the New Deal was some isolated, virtuous anomaly while the Great Society was just a reckless money dump. But in reality, those programs expanded on the same model you're praising. The only difference were the methods, and those were different, because the problems had evolved. You don't build highways to address medical bankruptcy or racial housing discrimination. The Great Society, in theory, responded to urban and racial inequality, and that's the real reason some people suddenly think "government help" is a bad thing. Not saying you, but just saying.
And stop with the lazy "throwing money at people" shyt. These programs funded healthcare (Medicaid), education (Head Start), nutrition (food stamps), and job training (Job Corps). These were concrete, targeted support systems that had measurable impact. If that's not a plan, then what is? Every serious study shows they helped reduce poverty too, especially for kids and older folks.
