Yes, this is exactly what I meant by government responsibility.
@manqiangrexue might think I meant dumping more welfare to individuals. I did not mean that. He do have a point Americans have access to more resources despite deterioations. But that is not the real solution. What I really meant these broad social level changes China is doing is what is missing in America, not resources.
Think of government as a harsh dad. If my kid is weak willed, I will discipline him into stronger will. Failing that, I will make sure drugs are unavailable to tempt him. Failing all that, I admit failure as the parent and make sure he dont make other good kids into thugs. Under no circumstance should I dump lots of money into him and spoil him. Nor would I just let him be left alone and cause problems.
Well people were talking about homeless facilities being too shoddy, giving newly constructed highrises to hobos and third hand cars not being appealing so I naturally thought you guys wanted to give more to the poor. Also, Seige was talking about educated high earners becoming homeless in under a year so I could not take it as anything other than a self-responsibility failure.
But I've said at least twice now that I am in support of a stricter US government that imposes heavy punishments for crimes (ie 10 years labor camp for violent robbery) and criminalizes voluntary homelessness (AKA refusal to carry one's own weight by joining the workforce essentially robbing society by forcing others to pay welfare taxes to keep them alive). Drug distributers get the death sentence for corrupting society just like in China, Singapore, Indonesia, etc... This is the tough dad approach, but the problem is that going this route in the US is like suddenly going tough dad on a 28 year old son. Any politician who suggests these things will get Hitler mustaches drawn over all his posters, wouldn't have a chance in hell of winning an election, and just might need 24 hour police protection of his home.
I previously said that America's governance had failed to instill work ethic and the spirit of responsibility in the American people. Now I think it may be a bigger failure than that because the US spent the last few decades actively demonizing Chinese and Russian/Soviet rule by characterizing the US as the country of total freedom where you can let loose, do anything and not do anything you want. In order to make Chinese Dad and Russian Dad look like assholes when they were actually tough dads, American Dad went way overboard painting himself as the coolest dad ever and that resulted in his kids having no sense of responsibility to self or society and lacking the discipline to be contributing citizens. So that's a hole that the US government has been digging for decades and continues to dig for itself. Tough governance is going to be a revolution... one where the government revolts and beats the people into submission. It's just too deep a hole to get out of.
So that is definitely an aspect of government failure, one that makes otherwise well-to-do people act irrationally, especially relevent to behaviors where people spend money for fun leaving no cushion for emergency. But aside from that, people saying that American poverty is all an institutional failure are analyzing a foreign country through a Chinese lense. If you put your feet on the ground in the toughest parts in the US, if you went to the slums in major cities like Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta, etc... and saw these people, heard them tell you that they will slash your tires and scratch your parked car the instant you are gone if you don't pay them to back off, been threatened by a homeless person cursing at you for not giving them money, you will see that these people are beyond normal governance. Not the US, China, any European country, no one can turn them around. Maybe North Korea can straighten them out in a labor camp but if you give them an ounce of freedom, if you let them back out on the street, they will be right back to square one instantaneously.
