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Article: Stiffing the poor.(government measures affect poor adversely)
- Article from:
- The Christian Century
- Article date:
- June 14, 2003
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 The Christian Century Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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ALICE O'CONNOR, a historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara, says that her students laugh when she talks about how Lyndon B. Johnson declared a "war on poverty" in the 1960s. Apparently the idea strikes them as quaint. But as O'Connor points out, the disparity between the rich and poor today is greater than it was in the Depression or in the post-World War II years of affluence.
We've moved from a political climate in which war can be declared on poverty to one in which war can be declared on the poor themselves--in the form of policies that favor the privileged. In the Bush administration's first tax cut in 2001, for instance, 40 percent of the ...