More Americans Die of Poverty than Terrorism

[Kevin]

The military actually helps a lot with fighting poverty. It provides some of the best middle class jobs around, not to mention the fact that it's probably the only really good job option for most young lower class unskilled workers.

As for Nickel and Dimed, I found the entire premise to be ridiculous. It's required reading at my wife's school, but really--it's just about some PhD bitching about her low-wage job. She misses the whole point as to what low wage jobs are. They're low wage because the employer can get away with paying that wage. No one owes you anything. You either continue to work in work you find "degrading," which is such bullshit, nothing about cleaning toilets is degrading, it's honest work, most of us on GC have probably had to clean toilets at jobs we had in high school/undergrad. You either work that job forever or you work that job until you can build up a skill set someone values more.

The government is not going to fix poverty with entitlement programs. It'll possibly make poverty more palatable or even desirable, but it won't fix it.

That said, I do wish that the Air Force had to have bake sales to build its bombers instead of schools having to engage in that activity to buy textbooks.