Last year was the 50th anniversary of the War on Poverty, and the date provoked a flurry of studies correcting some widespread myths; perhaps most notable was an enlightening report from the Council of Economic Advisers.

What needed correcting? Basically, the “nation of takers” narrative, according to which we have been pouring ever-growing sums into helping the poor while making no dent in the poverty rate.

The reality is that spending on “income security” — which includes virtually everything except Medicaid that you could construe as aid to people with low incomes — has basically been flat for decades, with a temporary (and appropriate) spurt due to unemployment benefits and food stamps during the Great Recession:

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If you don’t believe this, think about it: where are these big anti-poverty programs? We have EITC and food stamps; TANF, the successor to old-fashioned welfare, is a shadow of the former program. So where are these huge sums outside health care?

Meanwhile, it’s not true that poverty has been unchanged; the standard measure is known to be flawed, and a better measure shows progress, although not as much as we’d like:

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So it is somewhat disheartening to see the thoroughly debunked narrative still emerging in some of the Baltimore-inspired discussion.