Charles A. Murray, in The Public Interest (Fall 1982), P.O. Box 542, Old Chelsea, New York. N.Y. 10014.
Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty," launched in 1964, spurred a sharp 16-year rise in social spending. Yet Murray, former chief scientist of the American Institutes for Research, argues that Washington's new ac- tivism had a perverse result: It brought the gradual spread of American affluence to a "grinding halt."
Thanks chiefly to economic growth, the number of people living...