As we celebrate its 50th anniversary, I keep seeing the “failure” meme popping up on the Intertubes. True, we still have poverty, and the whole thing might have been more effective if the Vietnam War had not drained the funding. Still, so far as it went, it was well worth doing.
Don’t forget Medicare and Medicaid.
“poverty dropped from 20% when he took office to 12% when he left”
Sorry, but six years is not enough to judge the benefit and drawbacks of any such policies imo. Figures can be massaged; economic upswings can bring people temporarily out of poverty; downswings can plunge them back into poverty.
http://elcoushistory.tripod.com/economics1960.html
“President Johnson inherited a strong economy from president Kennedy. The growth during his presidency between 1964 and 1965 gave him an annual dividend of $4-5 billion in extra revenues to spend. For the first two years of Johnson’s presidency the inflation rate was just under 2 percent. In 1965 inflation began to pick up slightly, but the GNP (gross national product) grew by $9 billion and unemployment stood at 1.4 percent. *The economy was looking better during the winter of 1966: real growth was 9 percent, and with unemployment at 3.8 *percent the economy was robust. As it reached 1967 Johnson administration became concerned with inflation”
Cool correlation stats, bro. Now all you have to do is prove causation. For each of those programs you listed.
Not saying you are wrong, just saying you have not proved your case by linking to RationalWiki.
Could you demonstrate specifically how the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities reduced the poverty rate?
Regards,
Shodan
Fed the starving artists?
Are you inviting Starving Artist into this thread to testify? 
It’s also the case that the poverty rate was already dropping before LBJ took office. It was around 22% in 1959, for instance, and it was already well below 20% (more like 18%) when he took over.
As far as I can tell, this is the name of a EE professor at MIT. How is he a “program launched by Johnson through his Great Society initiative?”
I was also surprised to learn that Elementary and Secondary Education were programs launched under Johnson through his Great Society Initiative. I could have sworn I was in elementary school before Kennedy was shot.
Regards,
Shodan
He started a program called Upward Bound. I had to look it up, but I’ll bet **Cal Meacham **has heard of him.
Sorry. Even though I overlapped briefly with him, I don’t recall ever hearing of him while I was at the Institute.
Then whoever made up that list was sloppy or was cheating because that program is listed separately.
The list is just the list of article names under Wikipedia’s Great Society category.
Im guessing the article is not to be fully trusted:
“Johnson also signed the Gun Control Act of 1968, which upset conservatives who believed that it was a massive conspiracy to take away their only defense from hippies who hid in the bushes and randomly attacked you unless you had a gun 24/7.”
I was a participant in the Upward Bound program 1968 - 1971
Rationalwiki, which was set up by editors banned from Conservapedia, has a sarcastic streak.
I’m pretty sure that was a video game. 
ERMAHGERD! ERVERDERNCE
And a few months later…the Manson murders.