Our country has squandered trillions foolishly and it just keeps spending

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Our nation has spent many trillions of dollars on welfare since Lyndon Johnson declared his war on poverty. What have we gotten for those trillions? Consider the following quotes:

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Government is in the business of misdirected incentives. Take poverty. Years ago LBJ unleashed a flurry of government programs to eliminate it. We've spent well over a trillion dollars and all our good intentions got us is more poverty. Tom Purcell

Liberals cling to the idea that critics of welfare are motivated by greed or callous disregard for the less fortunate. In fact, during the twenty five years that followed Lyndon Johnson's declaration of war on poverty, U.S. taxpayers spent $3 trillion providing every conceivable support for the poor, the elderly, and the infirm. Private foundations spent scores of billions more, and private and religious charities even more. Nevertheless, as Ronald Reagan later quipped, "In the war on poverty, poverty won". Mona Charen

These guys [liberals] will never tire of spending our money and will never hold themselves accountable for their boondoggles. For them the failure of $5 trillion to eradicate poverty simply means we haven't spent enough money. Ditto with education. The solution is always more money. No amount of empirical evidence will shake their socialist theology. David Limbaugh

Quotas have done nothing to help the black underclass, or break the vicious cycles of welfare dependency and drug abuse, unwed motherhood and crime, fatherless families and dysfunctional public schools ... Uncle Sam spent trillions of dollars making a bad situation worse. An avalanche of government welfare money - no strings attached - paid people not to work or marry, save or invest, or confront the behavioral causes of their poverty. Rod Martin

We know that welfare is a failure. It has neither reduced poverty nor made the poor self-sufficient. It has torn at the social fabric of the country and been a significant factor in increasing out-of-wedlock births with all their attendant problems. It has weakened the work ethic and contributed to rising crime rates. Most tragically of all, the pathologies it engenders have been passed on from parent to child, from generation to generation. Michael D. Tanner

Once we realize that government doesn't work, we will stop dreaming that this or that social problem can be solved by passing a law - or by creating a new government program - or by electing someone who will make Washington more efficient or cost-conscious. Harry Browne

Once a bureau is created, its staff becomes a tenacious political interest group, well placed to defend its budget and to make a case for expanding its activities. Robert Higgs

The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program. Ronald Reagan

Once a fellow's enjoying the fruits of government health care and all the rest, he couldn't give a hoot about the general societal interest; He's got his, and if it's going to bankrupt the state a generation hence, well, as long as they can keep the checks coming till he's dead, it's fine with him. Mark Steyn

It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first. Ronald Reagan

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Do you think anyone could have predicted ahead of time that Johnson’s War on Poverty programs wouldn’t work. I would have. I think many others would have also. I personally would probably have been against essentially all the social type legislation that has been passed over the last 75 years. I would have objected with reasons like, “It won’t work.”, “It is not right. It is not just.”, “It is not worth the cost.”, “The cons outweigh the pros.”, etc. Why is it that some people can see ahead of time, before it is even tried, that an idea won’t work? What is it that they have that other people don’t have? Maybe common sense? You say you have to try it to know? I disagree. Who is responsible for all this type of legislation? Liberals. They take my money away from me very brazenly and freely and have all kinds of really great ideas on ways to spend it.

We have spent trillions and trillions on one war after another (Vietnamese war, Iraq war, war in Afghanistan). How many of the wars have we really won? What have we gotten for all those trillions that we have spent on all these wars? The yearly expenditures of our nation have exploded in size with passing years. We spend profligately. We have gone from the world’s largest creditor nation to the world’s largest debtor nation. Because of the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency we have been able to get away with repeatedly simply printing gigantic sums of money. Can we just keep going on in this way? For how long? Are we possibly living in a financial house of cards that will on some fine, beautiful day, suddenly come crashing down, triggered by some unexpected impetus, and taking with it 90% of the world’s economy? And what kind of social chaos do you think this kind of calamity would cause?

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Americans used to save their money. They used to be thrifty. They used to make things to sell to foreigners. Foreigners used to save their dollars so they could buy high-priced products, Made in USA. So much did they crave U.S. dollars that the American currency easily became the reserve currency of the entire world, and America became the world's biggest creditor by lending dollars to foreigners. Now, it is the foreigners who lend. They save their dollars, not to buy U.S. goods, but to buy U.S. Treasury bonds ... so Americans can buy high-quality foreign-made goods! And now, America is the world's biggest debtor." Bill Bonner

Whether ancient or modern, monarchy or republic, coin or paper, each nation descends pretty much the same slippery slope, expanding government to address perceived needs, accumulating too much debt, and then repudiating its obligations by destroying its currency. James Turk and John Rubino

The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced: the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced, if Rome doesn't want to become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance. Marcus Tullius Cicero

No matter what federal program one selects - Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the drug war, the income tax and the IRS, education, foreign interventions and wars - they are all a giant mess. Jacob G. Hornberger

One thing is certain. At some point global investors will lose confidence in our [U.S.] easy dollars and debt-financed prosperity, and then the chickens will come home to roost. David A. Stockman

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July 2016