President Lyndon Johnson launched the modern war on poverty, declaring it to be his Great Society agenda in 1964. Fifty years and a great deal of economic expansion later, American society is indeed more prosperous. But, despite $16 trillion spent over those five decades to end poverty, the poverty rate in 2014 is little changed from what it was when LBJ issued his declaration.

This sad fact is not passing unnoticed. “The federal government has helped decrease material deprivation,” House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., wrote in a recent paper outlining new strategies for fighting poverty. But he added that the war on poverty cannot be won simply by satisfying people’s creature needs. True victory over poverty involves making people self-sufficient who currently are not — even if doing so proves more costly than cash welfare.