Government subsidies for antisocial behavior stalled decades worth of black progress.

Jason Riley is critical of the Great Society and what Biden's proposed $3.5 trillion expansion of the social safety net might mean for Black progress. (WSJ, Sep 2021). Here are some money quotes.

"Entitlement programs were dramatically expanded in the 1960s in the service of a war on poverty, yet poverty fell at a slower rate after the Great Society initiatives were implemented, and overall dependency on the government for food, shelter and other basic necessities increased."

"Between 1940 and 1960 the percentage of black families living in poverty declined by 40 points as blacks increased their years of education and migrated from poorer rural areas to more prosperous urban environs in the South and North. No welfare program has ever come close to replicating that rate of black advancement, which predates affirmative action programs that often receive credit for creating the black middle class. Moreover, what we experienced in the wake of the Great Society interventions was slower progress or outright retrogression. Black labor-force participation rates fell, black unemployment rates rose, and the black nuclear family disintegrated. In 1960 fewer than 25% of black children were being raised by a single mother; within four decades, it was more than half."

“'The greatest twenty-five years of black progress after Emancipation itself came between the early postwar period and around 1973'”

“'Overall, African American incomes rose relative to white incomes for the first two-thirds of the century ... most scholars agree that income levels by race converged at
the greatest rate between 1940 and 1970.'”