Well they must pay for their wars, bases, carrier groups, and missile programs somehow....................

It is not just the wars. We have to pay for the massive fraud that our banker boys have been piling up. It is not just Wall Street, either. There was widespread fraud in the housing bubble, which supported all those trillions of dollars in derivatives, which are now worthless and which the banks are afraid to charge off because the banks will be instantly insolvent. As the Mogambo Guru likes to say, We are SO Freaking Doomed.

Those who publicize statistics would do well to get their data correct. According to the US Census Bureau, the population of the US is 304,059,724. According ti the Food Resource & Action Center (http://www.frac.org/html/news/fsp/2008.05_FSP.htm) the number of Americans receiving foodstamps is 28,435,841. That is less than 1 in 10. Also, though there are tent cities in some southern California or other areas of the country where the weather is extremely mild, that is not the norm for the United States. And poverty is not all of a piece. The State of California is nearly bankrupt as a result of their fiscal policies. Still people flock to California because the tempratures are mild and it has long been the "golden state" - the place where one could find jobs and opportunity and build a new life. Other states such as Texas and Alaska are actually booming and better choices for those in search of employment. Finally, poverty is not all of a piece in the United States. There are the truly poor, those who cannot care for themselves and who need help. There are also many who will not do so for a wide variety of reasons - in California, many residents of tent cities are adolescent runaways who left home because they did not want to be told what to do. Not for one moment do I minimize those who are victims of abuse or who simply are in need and the economy in the United States is not in great shape as a result of - again - fiscal policies. But, we are not becoming a Third World nation. We are instead a nation of people who work hard and provide for ourselves and for most citizens who are in need; we are a nation where people can fail and then pick themselves up w/ or w/o help and make new lives for themselves.