Initiatives - Towards the end of the decade

Military spending increased as American's presence in Vietnam grew. What had started as a small military action under Kennedy transfored into a major military initiative during Johnson's presidency.Ironically, spending on both wars-the war on poverty and the fighting war in Vietnam-contributed to prosperity in the short term. But by the end of the 1960s, the government's failure to raise taxes to pay for these efforts led to accelerating inflation, which eroded this prosperity, that had existed throughout the decade.