>>post a study about the "War on Poverty". You suggest it's invalid because it includes Medicaid. I point out that Medicaid is a piece of LBJ's "War on Poverty" thus must be included in the study for accuracy. You then say that because "healthcare does an admirable job" on "relieving the symptom of poverty" that I'm "insisting that healthcare is a failure unless it reduces poverty". You've just moved the goalpost.

Do I really have to quote your own words back to you? Press the back arrow a few times and see why you said Medicaid is a failure.

>>The point is that the programs created to fight the "War on Poverty" have been extremely expensive with little result in reducing poverty. Like the "War on Drugs", it has been an expensive failure at it's stated purpose.

If you accept that most of the "War on Poverty" expense is for Medicaid then the above reasoning collapses- unless you're saying that better healthcare is supposed to create jobs for the poor?

>>Society has decided. They like the cheap prices at places like Walmart.

Actually the "cheap" prices aren't as cheap as they should be. The main beneficiaries of offshoring are the Chinese and the corporates who achieve bumper profits until the Chinese long game bites them. The Chinese long strategy is predictable enough: e.g. consider car batteries. Prices out of China were subsidized long enough to drive out other competition and now prices are creeping back up. The result is a Chinese monopoly with prices no longer low enough to make it sensible to sacrifice all those jobs for what turns out to be a short term gain. Consider the effect on the wider manufacturing sector and the result is little short of economic sabotage by managers who still think it was something to be proud of.