President Johnson had declared an “all-out war on human poverty.”
It is a laudable aim. It has, in fact, been the aim of rulers, statesmen, economists, reformers, religious leaders — of every man of goodwill — from time immemorial. It is an aim shared by all free-enterprise economists since the time of Adam Smith and by all socialists and Communists since the time of Karl Marx. The problem does not concern the end but the means. What is the best way to abolish poverty?