It’s commonly believed the War on Poverty failed. The government spends, including Medicaid, nearly $1 trillion a year on alleviating poverty — yet there seem to be just as many poor people around as there were before we started spending all that loot. Amazingly, we spend money on stopping poverty and we don’t stop poverty.

People from the Right say this and insist all that money’s just been wasted. People from the Left say this and insist we’ve got to spend much more to make a difference. Both are wrong.