The National Debt

[NAHTMMM]

My point is, we don't have to go through national-level bureaucracies to start to fix this problem. The U.S. government is "of the people, by the people, for the people" (and an awful lot of other countries are democracies or republics too, of course), so we have the ultimate power ourselves, on the individual level, right? Going through a humongous, diffuse bureaucracy to handle a problem that is MUCH better to deal with (IMHO) on the individual level seems to me like trying to eat peas with a crocheting needle. One of those big, blunt crocheting needles.

But that requires enough non-poor people in a wide-enough area of influence caring enough about the impoverished to help them enough that they are no longer impoverished (or if they are still impoverished, it's their own faults). And you can't legislate caring any more than you can legislate morality, so you never hear about this on Capitol Hill or talk shows.