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[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

> And the government you apparantly find favor with would encourage this by 
> social programs, which have been in place since the depression, and have 
> not solved the problem?
>
> The logic escapes me.

Social welfare programs are band aids, temporary protection until healing 
has occurred. For nearly all of us, this means employment that pays us 
enough to buy shelter, utilities, food, clothing and transportation to get 
to and from employment.

Other social programs: education, health care, child-care, etc., if well 
designed and administered, can help some people lift themselves into the 
level of productive, tax-paying citizens. Some people will always be poor; 
some people choose to be homeless.

The diminishment of the middle class is of greater impact on our society 
and the strength of the country. A country of a few rich and lots of 
poor--we are not there but are moving in that direction--tends toward 
crime, dissatisfaction, estrangement, anarchy, unrest and revolution. 
Today, we might say it trends toward terrorism, but that seems to be more 
dogma driven than economic. Osama bin Laden may disagree. I don't know how 
he thinks.

The seemingly smart people I read persuade that a small upper class, a 
large middle class, and a small lower class, tend to constitute a stable 
society. So, our current trend is dangerous.