Not to derail the thread but when I listen to politicians making election year promises (to me, usually empty promises) I can't help but think that if we focused on jobs - better than minimum wage jobs - than alot of the nation's problems would fade away.
Seems tantalizingly easy to tweak everything to provide more jobs from my comfy armchair but I guess the big corporate players wouldn't get to pocket as much profit and we know that's not going to happen. Would likely require something similar to socialism and we know that won't happen and long term it tends to have its own problems.
I feel you may have hit the nail on the head. Entrenched poverty is the great killer of modern societies. I believe that the US would benefit greatly from a more Scandinavian system. I'm not saying you should adopt all of our ways but socialized medicine and education does work.
Part of the problem in the US is the way the debate is framed: "Socialism = Communism = bad". But there are many levels of before we hit communism. My home country of Denmark is more realistically known as a "social democracy" state. Which means we share the burden of education, healthcare, social welfare but also have plenty of private companies.
It is a nice balance between not having anybody without medical care and still having companies be able to function and make a nice profit.
And after all is said and done I am pretty sure that even though my taxes are in the 39% area before deductibles I am still paying less than a comparable US family when you include things like healthcare insurance and saving for college.
On the downside some luxury goods are heavily taxed here, cars are taxed with 150% and alcohol, candy, sugar are also taxed quite heavily. As a result we use small cars that are efficient, ride bikes a lot and now that I think of it.. I don't know anybody who owns a pickup truck.
I actually saw a Ford F150 in town the other day and nearly busted my gut laughing at how stupid that huge thing looked and how it served no purpose what so ever here.