Redistribution Doesn't Reduce Causes of Poverty

Harvard University Professor Jeffrey Miron: "The poverty rate declined significantly between 1959 and 1964 as the overall economy grew, but this was before the launch of President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty (and therefore before the enactment of Medicaid and Medicare, two of the largest anti-poverty programs in existence today)..."

Miron continues: "Between 1966 and 2009, the poverty rate fluctuated with the business cycle but showed little downward trend, even as anti-poverty spending grew by a factor of six in real terms. In other words, our anti-poverty programs have been implemented at enormous and ever-increasing cost — and it is not clear that they have done much to reduce the rate of poverty."