Why might assimilation not be achieved in a capitalist society?

50 years since inception, do you think the "Great Society" programs have achieved their goals?

• Details on Great Society programs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Society

• Answer:

  I would have to say that it's been a mixed bag. Things like the national endowment for the arts, public broadcasting, urban transit funding, food stamps, and medicaid have been remarkably effective given how poorly funded they have been. The federal subsidies to state eduction budgets are so requisite today it is hard to imagine what would happen without them. Stuff like Job Corps and Head Start (at least in my limited knowledge of them) as well as many welfare programs have been a failure. But again it is difficult to compare what the country would be like without having them to say if they are in fact worth it or not. Obviously the War on Poverty has been essentially lost with the poor getting poorer, and more Americans counting themselves among the poor. This has to be the single greatest failure, but not one the Great Society programs themselves could ever hope to achieve without radical changes to the US economy.