No one made their money in a vacuum. No one. Not one person has made their money without any outside influence of any sort. Whether that be the use of public infrastructure to move their product, other companies to provide them with the products and services they needed to be successful, or the employees to do the work. To say otherwise is to be intensionally obtuse.
Not sure what he's referring to, but it should be noted that that national debt in current dollars barely changed for over 30 years after WW2 until Reagan got into office. Then it started going up. And it doubled by the time he was out of office. It continued to grow through Bush 1. Clinton came in and it leveled off, then started decreasing. It started growing again under Bush, with a sharp rise at the end of his term. Since Obama came in, it has started leveling off. But yes, it does appear to be at its highest level. But it's not something that suddenly happened after Obama came into office.
Now, if you want to look at it as a percentage of GDP, the debt was indeed much higher in the mid 40s around WW2. It declined sharply until Reagan changed things and started increasing it sharply (up 20% during Reagan, and another 10-12% during Bush 1). It went down quite a bit during Clinton, rose sharply during Bush 2 (30%), and has leveled off since Obama came into office, and even gone down in the past year or two (topping off at about a 17% rise, as it was already sharply increasing when he started). In the past three years, the national debt is only up about 2% per GDP.
This article shows the level dropping sharply after the war on poverty started in 1964. From 19% down to 11% in ten years (was previously well over 20%). Since then, the rate has fluctuated between 12-15.5%. According to this report by the US Census, the poverty level currently is about the same as it was in 2009. This report by the census has a much longer graph on page 12. The poverty rate rose somewhat during Bush, and has leveled off and started dropping under Obama.
According to this report by end homelessness.org (who I wouldn't think would pad numbers in a positive light), homelessness has dropped almost every year for the past 7 years. And that's in real numbers. Add in population increases, and the rate drops more significantly. The numbers for vets show 74,050 homeless vets in 2009, and 49,933 now. That's a drop of over 30%. This report from HUD also has some data.
I wasn't aware that dropping the national homeless rate by 10% meant we were in a crisis. By the way, declaring a state of emergency in many areas is a maneuver to be able to use funds more easily, not necessarily that they are experiencing extreme homelessness. Homelessness is down some 30% in LA County in the last ten years, although up a few percentage points in the past five. In San Fran, it's stayed pretty much the same in the past ten years. NYC has indeed seen a large rise in homeless in recent years, but with the cost of living up there, you're going to see that. Hawaii has seen about a 20% rise, almost all attributable to Oahu. But seriously...you're on a small island thousands of miles from mainland. Unlike on the mainland US, people in search of work can't just go 100 miles to the next town, or head to another state with better opportunities. It requires an expensive flight, amongst other huge moving expenses, many of which aren't applicable to a mainland move.
So, yeah.
