God Wants Welfare? My Response to Jim Wallis

From the Corner:

After literally decades of failed social policies — policies that have helped create a permanent underclass, fostered a dependent spirit in millions of citizens, and helped explode the illegitimacy rate (all for the low, low price of several trillion dollars) — it would be tempting to roll our eyes at Wallis’s christianized socialism. Unfortunately, however, the evangelical progressive Left is gaining ground in American Christianity. Thus, columns like Wallis’s demand a response.

First, it is now crystal clear that more social spending does not mean less poverty. As the chart below shows, serious progress in reducing the poverty rate was made before the War on Poverty commenced. Since then, while social spending always rises, the poverty rate does not always decrease and instead bounces around in much the same way as the business cycle.

Read the whole thing (and check out the charts).  It should all look quite familiar.