Great Society

(noun)

A set of domestic programs in the United States announced by President Lyndon B. Johnson at Ohio University and subsequently promoted by him and fellow Democrats in Congress in the 1960s. Two main goals of the Great Society social reforms were the elimination of poverty and racial injustice. New major spending programs that addressed education, medical care, urban problems, and transportation were launched during this period

Related Terms

Examples of Great Society in the following topics:

  • Promoting Public Welfare and Income Redistribution

    • Roosevelt's response to the Great Depression.
    • President Roosevelt's program was called the New Deal and is partially credited with lifting America out of the Great Depression.
    • Johnson assisted with the implementation of his Great Society initiative.
    • He did so through the establishment of programs such as Medicare and Medicaid-- federal programs that exist to the present day that ensure certain levels of health care coverage for America's poor and elderly.The Great Society initiative further established educational programs such as the National Endowment for the Arts and generally deployed the executive bureaucracy to better welfare programs for the American public at large.

  • The Great Depression and the New Deal

    • The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II.
    • In the 21st century, the Great Depression is commonly used as an example of how far the world's economy can decline.
    • In many countries, the negative effects of the Great Depression lasted until the end of World War II.
    • Johnson's Great Society used the New Deal as inspiration for a dramatic expansion of liberal programs, which Republican Richard M.
    • USA annual real GDP from 1910 to 1960, with the years of the Great Depression (1929–1939) highlighted.

  • History of the Welfare State

    • The welfare system in the United States began in the 1930s, during the Great Depression.
    • After the Great Society legislation of the 1960s, for the first time a person who was not elderly or disabled could receive need-based aid from the federal government.

  • Welfare Reform

    • Johnson's Great Society.

  • Foreign Policy After the Cold War

    • The military-industrial complexes have great impact on their countries and help shape their society, policy and foreign relations.
    • Bush used the term to try to define the nature of the post Cold War era, and the spirit of a great power cooperation they hoped might materialize .
    • Bush used the term to try to define the nature of the post Cold War era, and the spirit of a great power cooperation they hoped might materialize .

  • Fours Schools of Economic Thought: Classical, Marxian, Keynesian, and the Chicago School.

    • A Finnish priest and member of parliament, he published a book called The National Gain in 1765, in which he proposed ideas about the freedom of trade and industry, explored the relationship between the economy and society, and laid out the principles of liberalism.
    • According to Chydenius, democracy, equality and a respect for human rights formed the only path towards progress and happiness for the whole of society.
    • Thus, in this school of economic thought, the labor theory of value is a method for measuring the degree to which labor is exploited in a capitalist society, rather than simply a method for calculating price.
    • Ben Bernanke, current Chairman of the Federal Reserve, is among the significant public economists today that generally accepts Friedman's analysis of the causes of the Great Depression.

  • Other Forms of Political Participation

    • Being a public official requires a great deal of dedication, time, energy, and money.
    • Coaching a little league team, volunteering at a nursing home, or working at a homeless shelter all represent participation in civil society, the community of individuals who volunteer and work cooperatively outside of formal governmental institutions.
    • Civil society depends on social networks, based on trust and goodwill, that form between friends and associates and allow them to work together to achieve common goals.
    • Volunteering is another form of political participation and a crucial part of a healthy civil society.

  • The End of Affirmative Action?

    • Continuous mass immigration was a feature of the United States economy and society since the first half of the 19th century.
    • She contends that race plays too great of a role in the decision making for students outside of the 10% rule.

  • Public and Private Bureaucracies

    • The Great Depression was a time of significant upheaval in the United States.
    • In The Affluent Society (1958), Galbraith urged voters reaching a certain material wealth begin to vote against the common good.
    • While the goals of an affluent society and complicit government serve the irrational techno-structure, public space is simultaneously impoverished.

  • Individualism

    • Individualism is a philosophy that stresses the value and rights of the individual vis-a-vis society and government.
    • Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and so value independence and self-reliance while opposing external interference upon one's own interests by society or institutions such as the government.
    • Individualism, sometimes closely associated with certain variants of anarchism or liberalism, typically takes it for granted that individuals know best and that public authority or society has no right to interfere in a person's decision-making process, unless a very compelling need to do so arises (and maybe not even in those circumstances).
    • Individualism is often contrasted either with totalitarianism or with collectivism, but in fact there is a spectrum of behaviors at the societal level ranging from highly individualistic societies through mixed societies to collectivist societies.