Well, you could start by stopping rich people from making any more money. They'll all be glad to move to the Emirates.

Or, mayhap, eliminate a system that runs on money in the first place! Nahhhh...

Really, it's only youse Europeans who have a fetish for inequality (Marx did give a guilt trip to youse, even to those who did not embrace Marxism or other forms of Socialism).

I'm not European, and many other Americans are beginning to more loudly complain about this situation, more's the pity for pro-capitalists like youse who fetishize money rather than *hurls!* equality!

The point is not, and has never been, equality and inequality.

Says you!

The point is that the quality of life of the poor climbs.

Which is exceedingly difficult to do in a system where a tiny portion of the population has such a hugely disproportionate amount of power, and have the ability to pretty much purchase the loyalty of the government officials with their campaign lobbying, along with all the best lawyers, which has the effect of constantly bolstering the gap between the small number of haves and the vast number of have nots, as well as insuring that the laws the very system of "justice" constantly favor the rich. And it doesn't change the fact that the poor remains exploited, nor the simple ethical point that all who do the work deserve full access to the social store of wealth that is produced.

On this account, America is doing badly since the financial crisis, but was doing better than almost every rich country before that; and was doing even better before it declared a War on Poverty (America loves to lose wars, you know?).

Yes, it does, because those in power have a vested interest in losing them, and you know what I mean by that. Winning a war against poverty has too many disadvantages for the tiny number of beneficiaries of a system that thrives on inequality, which is why "winning" this war on poverty is so extraordinarily difficult--if not impossible--within the context of a class-divided society itself.

It's bigger than it should, but not obscenely big.

Sorry, but it's bigger than all other nations combined, and a huge amount of our tax dollars go to fund it, so I totally disagree with you that it's not obscenely big.

Ending empire would go the longer way towards containing it. Ending corrupt procurement and contracting practices would do the rest (and is also facilitated by ending empire).

Lots of luck trying to convince the most powerful nation in the world from both a military and economic standpoint within a global system that thrives on competition and private ownership and control of the world's resources not to do everything in that considerable power to build an empire. The globalization of capital, and all that.

And as I have told Dissident endless times, health and pensions are bigger budget items, growing faster than defense is growing, and also present at state level unlike defense.

And as I have told you endless times (and will likely tell you endless times again), there are still over 20 million Americans who are not insured, because access to government sponsored health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid--on both a federal and state level, respectively--are doled out on a very limited basis, and much of the government spending--including the new "Obamacare" provisions--are actually designed to incorporate the powerful private insurance companies into the government system of health care, which is why the elderly and the disabled who have access to Medicare are forced to pick and choose between several private insurers. The government spends so much on health care in the USA not in an effort to see to it that everyone is insured (far from it!) but rather to cover the costs of a greatly unwieldy and very non-cost-efficient health care system, in contrast to the comparatively inexpensive single payer system that pretty much everyone in all other First World nations have access to as a right. Trust me, there is not a single person in the USA who doesn't know several people who are not insured at all, and this multitude of people usually lack insurance because they do not make enough money to purchase one of the obscenely expensive private insurance policies, but are nevertheless deemed by the government to make too much money to qualify for Medicaid services. And let's not forget that the ultra-conservatives in Mitt Romney's camp are still determined to dismantle Medicare and replace it with a fully privatized system.

And you said not a thing about Bianca.