Building The Golden Age Of America
The US poverty rate fell to the lowest level on record in 2025 while median household income climbed to a record high, the Census Bureau reported. The official poverty rate dropped 0.5 percentage points to 10.2% last year, leaving only 34.5 million people in poverty, according to data released by the bureau. This is the lowest poverty rate since the bureau began tracking it in 1967. The median (average) household income rose by 2.6% to $87,460, the highest on record dating back to 1967.
The White House hailed the figures, which cover the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term.
“President Trump’s proven economic agenda delivered historic working-class prosperity in his first year back in office, with record-high real income and record-low poverty breaking the records he set during his first term,” the administration said in a statement.
Jobless claims dropped to 196,000, hitting a year-to-date low not seen since 1969. This year, claims have been extraordinarily low by historical standards. Prior to 2026, the weekly initial claims number, wherein a newly unemployed worker filed his first claim, has only been this low four times since 1969. There was not a single week from 1970 to 2018 with claims this low. Trump 45 took office in January 2017.
HUGE SCAM: LBJ’s “Great Society” & “War On Poverty” Did Not Lower Poverty
As I was coming of age in the late 60s, the tax code was significantly changing. The new code sucked twice and thrice the amount of federal taxes from Americans at all levels of income. Democrat President Lyndon B. Johnson, along with his Democrat House and Democrat Senate promised Americans that his “War On Poverty” and“Great Society” legislation would end poverty in America. Ha! Over the years since, the poverty rate has fluctuated but it has never been below 11% UNTIL one Donald J. Trump became president.
As you can see from President Johnson’s detailed “Great Society” speech in May, 1964, not one of his promises was fulfilled, yet Big Government was still overtaxing working Americans and using the money for everything BUT helping the truly needy UNTIL Trump 45 lowered taxes under the “Tax Cuts & Jobs Act of 2017,” his first year in office. Last year Trump 47 lowered taxes on working Americans again in his “One Big Beautiful Bill,” his first year back in office.
As estimated by the federal government’s poverty line, 12.6 percent of the US population was poor in 1970 the year after LBJ’s massive tax increase began. Twenty years later, 1990, we can see that his “War On Poverty” and “Great Society” was a huge failure with the poverty rate at 13.5 percent. In another 20 years, 2010, the poverty rate at risen to 15.1 percent under the Obama Administration. The poverty rate was 12.4 percent in 2022, under the Biden Regime. After Trump 45’s tax cuts kicked in, poverty decreased to 10.5 percent in 2019. The poverty rate decreased yet again, to 10.2 percent in 2025, in part, because Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” became effective FOR tax year 2025 & employers started lowered tax deductions from paychecks immediately after President Trump signed it on July 4, 2025. Trump’s various economic policies have also helped decrease poverty in the United States of America.
Democrats’ War On Earners And Families
The “War On Poverty” was actually a war on earners and freedom. Keep in mind, every time income taxes were increased, more working families are pushed into poverty. There has been no real improvement since Democrats, lead by President Lyndon B. Johnson, conned Americans into believing higher taxes would end poverty. Perhaps poverty would have decreased had ALL the increased taxes been used to help the needy. They weren’t. They were used to fund Leftist NGOs and various federal & state agencies to increase the power of the Democrat Party and to build an ever more powerful Big Government. Trump 47 is in the process of dismantling the programs which funnel YOUR tax dollars to USAID, tens of thousands of NGOs, fraudsters, Deep State operatives, etc.
I would argue that modest taxation is the main reason that, prior to LBJ’s “War,” most families could and did live very comfortably on one income, as did my family of five with a father who only had a 10th grade education. Today, most families are living on two or three incomes, some barely surviving. It took the economic policies of President Trump 45, ten presidents after Johnson, to push the poverty rate below what it was before the “War On Poverty” began. His policies continue decreasing poverty.
Check me out on X @dianelgruber.
When Did LBJ’s “Great Society” Become A Way To Funnel Americans’ Tax Dollars To Foreign Fraudsters?
The Great Society was an ambitious series of policy initiatives, legislation and programs spearheaded by President Lyndon B. Johnson (November 22, 1963 to January 20, 1969) with the main goals of ending poverty, reducing crime and abolishing inequality. At that time, Democrats owned the House, the Senate and the White house. In May 1964, Johnson laid ou…
Where Is The “Great Society” LBJ Promised Us?
Last week I invited a volunteer from Peninsula Poverty Response to attend our Peninsula Patriots* meeting to explain his group’s work. I wish I had not learned about the depressing “lifestyles” he described to us. Too many Americans in our little coastal community are living in Third World poverty. He advised us, just blocks from the library where we…
The author, Diane L. Gruber, is a First Amendment advocate who writes for Substack. She calls her Substack newsletter America First Re-Ignited. Follow me on X @DianeLGruber.
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