Professor Steven Horwitz argues that it actually interfered with economic progress for millions of Americans and that what an effective war on poverty would require is the elimination of government policies that keep poorer people from improving their lives, such as minimum wage laws and public school monopolies.

Politicians love to make gaudy claims about their great plans for improving society and, alas, many voters fall for them. Instead of new programs and policies that are certain to create new problems, we just need to whittle away the programs and policies that are the cause of our problems, in this case the lack of upward mobility for people trapped in poverty.