Opinion of Lyndon B. Johnson

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

FF, he made the Democrats not racist.

“I'll have those n**gers voting Democratic for the next 200 years." -Lyndon Johnson

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

FF, he made the Democrats not racist.

“I'll have those n**gers voting Democratic for the next 200 years." -Lyndon Johnson

Too bad thre isn't a tape to prove he actuall said hat and tat that quote isn't just someone claiming h said that to discredit him after he was dead.

Also, he wasn't socially conservative. He was very much in favor of birth control. Also, he wasn't a war monger, he felt going to Vietnam was the only option.

He was quoted as having said this to two like-minded governors on Air Force One.  If that's not enough for you, hear the word spoken by the man himself.

If LBJ were a Republican, there's not a doubt in my mind most Democrats would have decried him as one of the most racist presidents of the 20th century.  He certainly wouldn't have the following that he enjoys today.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Now, regarding to this baloney, I cannot say that about Nixon but the existence of a Middle Class and a strong Middle Class is, in many ways, a result of government action towards social justice and the reduction of inequalities.

No. The American middle class was created by military spending during WWII, not liberal social justice. Throughout the 50s 60s and 70s, military spending averaged roughly 10% of GDP (compared to 4.5% today) and roughly 55% of all government expenditures (compared to 20% today). Since the military provided education, healthcare, pension, and other benefits; as well as a disciplinary structure, military built the strongest middle class in the world by taxing just 19% of GDP. No middle class has ever reproduced that achievement, besides a brief moment during the dot com bubble.

Eisenhower complained bitterly about the military industrial complex, which isn't necessary bad by itself, but it wasn't until LBJ that DC established a framework for slashing military spending, and transferring the funds into non-investment handouts. LBJ had to dismantle JFK's New Frontier policies to make it happen. Nixon saw the potential of LBJ's new vote buying arrangement so he made expansions. As soon as the Tet Offensive was contained, military spending tumbled. Military spending received a temporary boost during the Reagan admin, but it quickly plummeted to 4% GDP during Clinton's presidency.

Liberal social policy could be responsible for building the most powerful middle class on earth, but politicians have figured out it's easier to make specious economic arguments and then buy votes with social programs. Conservative Republicans were not responsible for defunding the military and transferring the spending to economically ineffective programs. Conservatives and Libertarians are the result of bureaucratic malfeasance around the world.

If welfare programs are truly inefficient, what difference does it make if they're provided as military benefits, instead?

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

If welfare programs are truly inefficient, what difference does it make if they're provided as military benefits, instead?

Because military expenditures for soldiers often make their way into the economy in some productive capacity, and we all benefit. When the military train medics and engineers, like they did for my grandmother and grandfather during WWII, those soldiers are eventually discharged, and the general economy benefits from well-trained civil engineers and medical workers. GI Bill education also improves economic productivity. Even during active duty, soldiers and equipment provide an economic benefit by contributing to global stability, though our Iraq operations have put that goal in jeopardy.

The welfare state does not have the same track record, neither does the FICA retirement state. The extraordinary tax rates inherent to the welfare system keep people trapped in poverty. Transfer payments, SNAP, Medicaid, etc often produce nothing other than prolonged poverty. Social Security payments and Medicare go to people who've dropped out of the labor force, though retirees still produce some imputed economic activity.

I'm not saying we should turn into heartless technocrats, but we are the opposite of heartless technocrats at the moment. We are killing ourselves with bad charity because the optics are good for politicians.....as long as you ignore the national debt.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Going by your posts, you seem to be under the impression - and, correct me if I'm wrong - that we are still living in the New Deal era.  This is certainly not the case.

While it is true that Social Security, welfare, etc. live on, the New Deal era came to an end around the mid-70s with the rise of corporate special interests.  (It was in 1975 that the SUN-PAC decision legalized corporate PACs, the lobbyist organizations that bribe Congress today.)  The number of PACs exploded ten years after that.  Ever since the Carter administration, lobbyists have enjoyed a number of victories on Capitol Hill from deregulation, capital gains tax cuts, Social Security tax increases, and they even persuaded Congress to impose a tax on unemployment benefits.

Keep in mind that much of our domestic spending goes to middle-class entitlement programs like student loans, school lunches, job training, and Medicaid.  Medicaid, by the way, is the largest item of those four, and most of Medicaid represents profits for hospitals and doctors.  It should not be described as an anti-poverty program.

I don't disagree that military aid has boosted the economy, but military dollars have to be spent in a way for vets and troops to actually benefit.  How about stopping all those contracts for building bigger and better weapons to kill more people and ending all the wars?  How about investing more in the troops themselves instead of fueling our already bloated military industrial complex?  There is a better way to reduce military spending without suppressing economic growth: cut the Pentagon budget, invest more in domestic programs which create more jobs than military spending.  And the automatic budget cuts of the Budget Control Act simply take military budgets back to where they were in 2007.

All of that in mind, and the US still spends 43% of global military expenditures.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Going by your posts, you seem to be under the impression - and, correct me if I'm wrong - that we are still living in the New Deal era.  This is certainly not the case.

While it is true that Social Security, welfare, etc. live on, the New Deal era came to an end around the mid-70s with the rise of corporate special interests.  (It was in 1975 that the SUN-PAC decision legalized corporate PACs, the lobbyist organizations that bribe Congress today.)  The number of PACs exploded ten years after that.  Ever since the Carter administration, lobbyists have enjoyed a number of victories on Capitol Hill from deregulation, capital gains tax cuts, Social Security tax increases, and they even persuaded Congress to impose a tax on unemployment benefits.

Keep in mind that much of our domestic spending goes to middle-class entitlement programs like student loans, school lunches, job training, and Medicaid.  Medicaid, by the way, is the largest item of those four, and most of Medicaid represents profits for hospitals and doctors.  It should not be described as an anti-poverty program.

If you want to discuss socio-economics, you need to make it less obvious that you've never read a federal budget. We spend $1.8T on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Keep in mind that 60% of present Medicaid outlays go to senior citizens for LTC and LTCI premiums. We spend another $400B on Welfare/Unemployment (includes SNAP) and $220B on interest to finance the explosion of entitlement spending. The budget is about 65% entitlement spending for the elderly and poor, and 35% on productivity spending for the middle class. In the 1960s, the formula was reversed.

Education, by comparison, is a paltry $85B budget. Transportation is an anemic $90B, DOJ is around $30B, agricultural development is just $35B, and government administration is only about $30B.

Are our problems becoming more evident? We've turned the entire diet into calories from fat. We have heart disease.

Are you intentionally ignoring parts of my post?  That's been happening a lot to me today.

12% of the 2012 budget went toward safety net programs, which provide aid (other than health insurance or Social Security benefits) to families in poverty.  We spend a whopping 7% on federal retirees and veterans.  Stop confusing entitlements with anti-poverty programs.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Are you intentionally ignoring parts of my post?  That's been happening a lot to me today.

12% of the 2012 budget went toward safety net programs, which provide aid (other than health insurance or Social Security benefits) to families in poverty.  We spend a whopping 7% on federal retirees and veterans.  Stop confusing entitlements with anti-poverty programs.

"Entitlements" is just shorthand for social spending distributed directly to individual tax payers. Nothing has been confused on my end.

But you're misrepresenting the disparities between Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid/CHIP and safety net programs.  You cannot include middle-class entitlements in figures designed to discredit the War on Poverty.  I already described how our military expenditures are not being used to spur growth and linked you to a study proving that domestic spending creates more jobs, which is entirely contrary to your premise.

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You're missing the entire point.  My point was that the government has shifted focus away from anti-poverty spending and many of the New Deal/Great Society-era initiatives have been scaled back, in part due to the rise of special interests.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

But you're misrepresenting the disparities between Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid/CHIP and safety net programs.  You cannot include middle-class entitlements in figures designed to discredit the War on Poverty.  I already described how our military expenditures are not being used to spur growth and linked you to a study proving that domestic spending creates more jobs, which is entirely contrary to your premise.

If I were trying to disparage the War on Poverty, I'd point out the high marginal tax rates on the poor, and the paternalistic futility of expanding non-cash benefits, other than healthcare perhaps. I'd point out that the feds have let senior citizens raid Medicaid. I wouldn't bother trying to misrepresent funding.

My post was about LBJ's Great Society, which started dismantling the military (the middle class entitlement of the day) to build Medicaid, Medicare, Welfare, Food Stamps, and HUD. Over time, Great Society programs have expanded so rapidly that they've crowded out proper investment and productivity spending for the middle class. The negative-feedback cycle created by the Great Society breeds poverty, and we've been deficit spending since the 80s to counteract the lack of middle class investment. Great Society has also eliminated class mobility for people born into poverty.

GS looks good on paper, and that's why Nixon tried to steal it for Republicans, which gave him a landslide victory in 1972. Unfortunately, the underlying economics behind the Great Society are quite grotesque. Most people don't understand how bad the problem really is.

I'm going to keep this post as brief as possible, because I don't think I could do otherwise without repeating myself.

We can't make the mistake of conflating military spending with veteran's spending.  If you mean to suggest LBJ dismantled veterans' benefits for entitlement programs, I cannot verify or dispute that, but I have very strong doubts that he did.  (Though, interestingly, it is Republicans who have consistently opposed raising VA benefits and, up until very recently, supported expanding the military industrial complex.)  12% of the 2012 budget went toward safety net programs, 7% went to veterans, and 19% went to defense (the Pentagon).