Little Hawk, you say: There is terrible poverty in the USA in many places, alongside tremendous wealth. The gap between rich and poor is growing wider all the time, and there's very little social safety net. A succession of neoconservative American governments have mostly made the situation steadily worse, specially since the Reagan era. The inner cities have been more or less abandoned. That is not trimming of over fat government, it's abdication of government!

What you have is an increasingly desperate underclass, a beleagured and frightened middle class fleeing to featureless suburbs and gated communities, and an upper class that keeps getting richer and more isolated from the troubles of the lower and middle classes...allied with a media that feeds people paranoia on a daily basis...just to make a profit!

That's a recipe for social decay, oligarchy, and the destruction of democracy...all so the rich can get richer. That's what's happening.

What you say may be true in the HUGE cities- I don't know. I don't live there. (Neither do you, actually.) All I know is that if things where I live were as bad as you say - or where I have ever lived (I have lived in Oregon, Virginia, Michigan and Alaska, and visited many other states) I'd be quaking in my slippers behind locked and barred doors and windows.

You remind me of a childless person giving advice to a parent.   Note that I don't think you shouldn't form and give opinions- but if you were rearing a kid, you might find yourself at a loss on occasion. The same way that you might find living in the US for the most part rich, fulfilling and without fear.