Yaolee Chen

2.The Great Society

Lyndon B. Johnson’s vision of a “Great Society” emphasized equity. He foresaw a nation where no one would have to live in poverty and all would have sufficient money income, public services, and civil rights to enable them to participate with dignity as full citizens. It would be an affluent society, but also a compassionate one, one that called for sacrifice by the majority to bring out the talents and willing cooperation of previously submerged and disadvantaged minorities. Its goals were to end poverty, to promoted equality, to improve education to rejuvenated cities, and to protect the environment. Some of the most important elements were the Medicare, the education, and the urban renewal programs. In short, the Great Society is a war on poverty.

The Economic Opportunity Act 1964 created several programs. Its short-term goals were to give people tools to get out of their poverty. The bill created a Job Corps (similar to the New Deal Civilian Conservation Corps); a domestic peace corps; a system for vocational training; and Head Start, (a pre-school program designed to prepare children for success in public school). The bill also founded community action programs and extended loans to small businessmen and farmers.

Medicare. As in 1964, 44 percent of seniors had no health care coverage, and with the medical bills that come with older age, this propelled many seniors into poverty. In fact, more than one in three Americans over 65 were living below the poverty line. The Medicare helps all seniors now have health care, and the poverty rate for the elderly has fallen to approximately one in ten, today. Along with Medicare, the Johnson Administration established the Medicaid program to provide health care to the poor.

Education. In 1964, 8 million American adults had not finished 5 years in school; more than 20 million had not finished eight years; and almost a quarter of the nation’s population, around 54 million people, hadn’t finished high school. In 1965, Congress passed the groundbreaking Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which for the first time provided federal funding for education below the college level. And it also passed The Higher Education Act, which created a National Teachers Corps and provided financial assistance to students wishing to attend college. Today, our educational system is the best educational system in the world: the highest population of Master Degree and PhD. in the world job markets today. The student loan, for example, benefits to the individual like me, who once was too poor to come to school and now am able to perform a professional job in the American society as the 4 major objectives of the federal role in education were, 1^st educating the disadvantaged, 2^nd broadening the access to higher education, 3^rd improving education for the world of work, 4^th desegregating schools and colleges.

As a student, I do appreciate for the student loan. While the tax-payers might complain that the federal money was throwing money on the problems and doing nothing since in 1960 federal grants to elementary and secondary schools amounted to about a half-billion dollars and by 1970 this had risen to about $3.5 billion, but the judgment can not be so fairly made in compared with the young generation working for no purpose and the children making problems in our societies. In a long term, Johnson’s educational reform is good. It gives children and young people chances to learn before they can make living by themselves.

Urban renewal and conservation Johnson signed the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1965 that established the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and expanded funding for public housing. He also provided aid to cities to rebuild blighted areas.

In the 1960s, the housing programs did not directly benefited to the black communities; because of the war in Vietnam, the government did not have sufficient money for it. Till Nixon Administration, the “black capitalism” as a continual program of the New Frontier and Great Society programs began to financial support to the black housing. In a short term, the benefits was not clear, but one can traces it in the growth of black employment and the reduction in joblessness, as well as in rising black income, especially among the better educated. You can argue with me that the black ghettoes in Chicago today remained poor and uneducated in the cities. But it is the failure of the dwellers, not the programs of the Great Society itself.

The Great Society has to do with the general process of social reform in a middle-class democracy, and it also has to do with the specific legislative programs that made up the Great Society. One might says that social legislation is merely a sham, aimed at camouflaging, not solving, problems; or that all major political intervention in social problems is a mistake, bound to fail, and better left to local government, private charity, or the free market. Contrary to these dogmas, the evidence seems to show that the problems are real, that the political pressure to do something about them is often irresistible, and that many partial, but genuine successes have been achieved. The Great Society in many areas is undisputed as political leaders still wrestle with how to deal with these issues of poverty, health care, and education today.