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The War on Poverty

The Other America (1962) Culture of Poverty Jobs Corps (1964) Medicare and Medicaid (1965). Elementary and Secondary Education Act (1965) Domino Theory. The War on Poverty. I. Questions about Poverty II. The Great Society III. Vietnam. I. Questions About Poverty. The Other America.

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The War on Poverty

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  1. The Other America (1962) Culture of Poverty Jobs Corps (1964) Medicare and Medicaid (1965) Elementary and Secondary Education Act (1965) Domino Theory The War on Poverty I. Questions about Poverty II. The Great Society III. Vietnam

  2. I. Questions About Poverty

  3. The Other America While most Americans had been celebrating their rising affluence during the post war era, more than 40 million out of 186 million Americans were mired in poverty. Michael Harrington

  4. Americans in Poverty in 1960 • To be considered below the poverty line a family of four had to make less than $3,022. • That is equal to $21,274 in 2007.

  5. Different Theories of Poverty • Individual responsibility. • Structural problems in the American economic system. • Culture-of-Poverty.

  6. Does the federal government have the responsibility for dealing with poverty? • If so, what should it do?

  7. Ways to Deal with Poverty • Transfer money from wealthy to poor. • Change the United States’ economic and political structure. • End the Culture-of-Poverty.

  8. II. The Great Society

  9. “The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time.”

  10. LBJ’s Reaction to Ant-Poverty Options • Money Transfer—considered it socialist and liberals thought it would not work. • Structural Changes—not viable politically. • End Culture of Poverty—LBJ’s last alternative.

  11. Office of Economic Opportunity Created numerous programs, including: • Head Start • VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) • The Jobs Corps

  12. The Jobs Corps took young adults from poor neighborhoods and trained them to obtain and hold jobs.

  13. Jobs Corps Training Center in Oregon

  14. Elementary and Secondary Education Act “In many places, classrooms are overcrowded and curricula are outdated. Most of our qualified teachers are underpaid, and many of our paid teachers are under qualified. So we must give every child a place to sit and a teacher to learn from. Poverty must not be a bar to learning, and learning must offer an escape from poverty.”

  15. Gym Class

  16. Lyndon Johnson signing the Medicare Bill

  17. Major Beneficiaries of Medicare and Medicaid Doctors' incomes rose 11% per year during the first seven years of the program

  18. A Two Tiered Health System Only 8 percent of the 12,000 doctors in New York State would take Medicare patients

  19. III. Vietnam

  20. - Vice President Johnson after visiting South Vietnam in 1961 “We must decide whether to help these countries to the best of our ability or throw in the towel in the area and pull back our defenses to San Francisco.”

  21. JFK accepted the domino theory that “for us to withdraw would mean the collapse not only of South Vietnam but of Southeast Asia.” • By 1963 he had increased the number of military advisors to 16, 732.

  22. Kennedy’s Ambivalence • “In the final analysis it is their war. They are the ones who have to win it or lose it. We can help them, we can give them equipment, we can send our men their as advisers, but they have to win it, the people of Vietnam.” • In 1962 he ordered the Pentagon to prepare a plan for American disengagement, but acknowledged “I can’t do it until after 1965—after I’m elected.”

  23. The United States’ Growing Involvement

  24. A young Marine private waits on the beach during the Marine landing at Da Nang in 1965

  25. The Economic Cost

  26. LBJ meeting US troops in Vietnam in 1966. As he became more preoccupied with the war he mentioned the Great Society less and less

  27. The Human Cost

  28. By 1968 the US had dropped 3.2 million tons of explosives, compared to 2 million during WWII

  29. An American major standing in the rubble of Ben Tre said “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”

  30. After the massacre at My Lai, in which over 500 civilians were killed

  31. “There may be a limit beyond which Americans and much of the world will not permit the United State to go. The picture of the world’s greatest superpower killing or seriously injuring 1,000 noncombatants a week, while trying to pound a tiny backward nation into submission on an issue whose merits are hotly disputed, is not a pretty one. It could conceivably produce a costly distortion in the American national consciousness and in the world image of the United States—especially if the damage to North Vietnam is complete enough to be ‘successful.’” - Excerpt from a private letter from Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to LBJ in 1967

  32. In 1967 200,000 people marched on Washington to protest the war in Vietnam

  33. LBJ withdrew from the presidential contest on March 31, 1967.

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