Thomas Sowell assesses the 50-year history of the federal government’s “War On Poverty,” and the veteran economist sees little to celebrate.

The real question is: What did the War on Poverty set out to do and how well did it do it, if at all?

Without some idea of what a person or a program is trying to do, there is no way to know whether what actually happened was a success or a failure. When the hard facts show that a policy has failed, nothing is easier for its defenders than to make up a new set of criteria by which it can be said to have succeeded.

That has in fact been what happened with the War on Poverty.

Both President John F. Kennedy, who launched the proposal for a War on Poverty, and his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, who guided the legislation through Congress and then signed it into law, were very explicit as to what the War on Poverty was intended to accomplish.

Its mission was not simply to prove that spending money on the poor led to some economic benefits to the poor. Nobody ever doubted that. How could they?

What the War on Poverty was intended to end was mass dependency on government. President Kennedy said, “We must find ways of returning far more of our dependent people to independence.”

The same theme was repeated endlessly by President Johnson. The purpose of the War on Poverty, he said, was to make “taxpayers out of taxeaters.” Its slogan was, “Give a hand up, not a handout.” When Lyndon Johnson signed the landmark legislation into law, he declared: “The days of the dole in our country are numbered.”

Now, 50 years and trillions of dollars later, it is painfully clear that there is more dependency than ever.