Zirpoli: Shifting views on who benefits from government assistance in the United States

Americans are welcoming government help from a pandemic that has closed thousands of small businesses and pushed many American families into poverty. In the1960s, according to Pew Research, “more than three in four Americans said they trusted the government.” This enabled the government to do big things like enforce clean water and air regulations, get lead-based paint out of our homes, and pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965, to name a few. However, trust in the government was diminished by the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, Civil Rights Protests, and the assassinations of President John Kennedy and Martin Luther King. The only good news in that decade was when America landed a man on the moon in 1969.