Today in History: LBJ Outlines His Great Society, Builds The Entitlement / Welfare State

Today in history, President Lyndon Johnson outlined his vision for a “Great Society”. The results of that vision include:

War on Poverty: forty programs that were intended to eliminate poverty by improving living conditions and enabling people to lift themselves out of the cycle of poverty. Beginnings of the Welfare State.

Education: sixty separate bills that provided for new and better-equipped classrooms, minority scholarships, and low-interest student loans.

Medicare & Medicaid: guaranteed health care to every American over sixty-five.

The Environment: the beginning of the EPA

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National Endowment for the Arts and the Humanities: created with the philosophy that artists, performers, and writers deserve support.

Job Corps: provided enabling skills for young men and women.

Head Start: program for four- and five-year-old children from disadvantaged families that gave them a chance to start school on an even basis with other youngsters.

While well intentioned, Medicare and Medicaid and the entitlement / welfare state threaten to bankrupt our country. Other parts of the Great Society are responsible for the out of control growth of big government, centralized control and the massive regulatory state we are now fighting against.

In your opinion which of these programs have been good or bad for the country and why?