It is absolutely an epidemic, it is absolutely one of the sources of our economic drag, and I have a couple ideas on some things that may or may not help.  Who knows?  But we can dream.  First of all, it's 2013.  Our President is a half-black man named Barack Hussein Obama, elected 10 years after 9/11, with questionable affiliations and radical colleagues.  If you aren't mentally or physically INCAPABLE of holding a job, there is no reason, in the USA year 2013, that you should not be able to hold at least some position at some job somewhere.  That being said, there are people who genuinely need help, and those people should receive assistance.  But in large part, the perpetuation of our poverty cycle starts at home.  When parents are either non-existent or apathetic towards the success and education of their children, the children grow up to not care about their successes either.  This is shown in failing schools across America where one or two parents show up to the PTA meetings and the 2nd grade children are constantly fighting and saying things I didn't even know how to say as a child.  Perhaps we should narrow down the spectrum of who should be given assistance to an extreme gradient, and use the trillions of dollars per year we would likely save investing in those lower-economic-class communities, raising property value, building private industry to create jobs, incentivizing robust capitalism and risk-taking, and more personal pride and responsibility.  Maybe a good place to start would be if politicians would sit down and have a conversation with the hurting class in America instead of pitting us all against each other.