Robert Higgs Quotes

If the poor only had profiles there would be no difficulty in solving the problem of poverty

You can't lift people out of poverty simply by tweaking the tax system, or by raising the minimum wage by a few cents, or by reducing student debt slightly. These might be necessary components of a larger anti-poverty program, but you have to accept they are pieces of a much larger puzzle.

When you talk about war on poverty it doesn't mean very much; but if you can show to some degree this sort of thing then you can show a great deal more of how people are living and a very great percentage of our people today.

There was never a war on poverty. Maybe there was a skirmish on poverty.

In America today, we are nearer a final triumph over poverty than is any other land.

Society’s willingness to provide for the poor among them increases when the standard of living is advancing.

Reducing poverty is in our own interest.

For the first time in America's history, poverty is on the run.

Poverty decreased in America as a result of the War on Poverty

We used to wage war on poverty—not poor people.

For too long, we've attached some mythic notion to government solutions, and yet, 40 years after we began the War on Poverty, poverty still abounds.

You are not going to lift everybody out of poverty through the kindness of wealthy people.

I've always thought my main concern is to alleviate the burdens on people, who were earning less money, perhaps than £80,000.

My president will boldly throw 1 million into poverty.

The war on poverty programs help address the pain of poverty.

Poverty can't be eliminated by punishing people who've escaped poverty.

The matter of social security and these grants is to help to address the levels of poverty in the country.

The United States has more people living in poverty than at almost any time in the modern history of our country. I believe that in a democratic, civilized society none of our people should be hungry or living in desperation. We need to expand Social Security, not cut it. We need to increase funding for nutrition programs, not cut them.

Between 1965 (the beginning of LBJ's "Great Society") and 1994, welfare spending has cost the taxpayers $5.4 trillion in constant 1993 dollars. The War on Poverty has cost us 70 % more than the total price tag for defeating both Germany and Japan in World War II, after adjusting for inflation. Many believe that Welfare has destroyed millions of families and cost a huge portion of our national wealth in the process.

The US, for historical reasons, mistrusts the concept of a welfare state, and this mistrust shows itself nakedly under present US government, which commits uncounted billions of the national wealth to what it calls defence, and is close-fisted in giving money to plans which would ameliorate the grinding poverty of a great part of its people. Quite simply, in Canada you could not get away with that.

Policies are also to blame: the only thing that the governments and people can come up with to give to the poor people is charity. Poor people get hand outs from the state. But this is not a solution to poverty.

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.

Franklin Roosevelt said the test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance to those who have much; it is whether we provide enough to those who have too little. This reconciliation package fails that test as well.

Taxing poor families runs counter to decades of effort to help people lift themselves out of poverty through work.

We need to make sure middle-class people are able to pay the bills. We need to make sure that poor people don't starve. Those are values, too.