You are ignoring one huge factor: culture.

The United States has culture of spending and spending. A big chunk of the middle class is in debt and has very little savings. We Americans love to have luxury material goods that we don't need such as Plasma-TVs and Sirus radios. The poor are like everyone else, they get a little bit of money and spend it on luxury items such as cars and shoes. The only difference is that the poor feel the effect of their spending more than middle-class.

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Formally Htown Boliviano

If I somehow found myself in the transparently social-climbing "upper middle class" I’d sign up for parachute lessons immediately.

In the interim – as is I do in real life - I’d tell all my neighbours I was a reformed drunk that hated celestially-climbing Christians.

That way, only truly decent people bother with you. The dogs take care of any stray JW’s, Mormons, or any other devil-dodging moronic American sect, that periodically slither up your drive seeking the scalps of the "unsaved."

Funny how dog’s instinctively hate coppers and “Christians,” ain’t it?

Could it be that they can see straight through their phoney facade to all the suppressed excreta at the back of the shop?

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"Whoever imagines himself a favorite with God holds others in contempt."
-- Robert Green Ingersoll, lawyer and orator (1833-1899)

Get rid of the gvt system and you just change the name of who is ripping off the taxpayer. When charities give million dollar salaries to their CEO's and only see a a portion of the donation used as promised you have people stealing from the charity system.....gvt has its issues but the private sector has a bad habit of using charitable donations as a means to enrich the corporate elite...Oversight is the answer not some rush to privatize the safety net.