An interesting post from the Cato Institute’s Dan Mitchell on the latest poverty stats in the US. Apparently poverty was declining in the US until LBJ launched his “war on poverty” which dramatically increased the scope and scale of the American welfare state.

Mitchell adds, “the so-called War on Poverty has undermined economic progress by trapping people in lives of dependency.” Note that the US uses an absolute rather than relative measure of poverty, so these statistics really are something to be concerned about.