>>There are hundreds of thousands of people who work full time and still can't put food on the table. That is a problem that can be fixed IF we have a government that is willing to do something about it.
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>And here we get to the fundamental point - a "war on poverty" for 50 years, a government trying to do something about it, and making matters worse.

Sad, but true. The "war on poverty" and "war on hunger" is kind of a joke at this stage. If you take a look at the numbers you'll see that we're spending a LOT LESS on this as far as the hunger goes. Recently there was an excellent documentary film on this called "A Place At The table " http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1736049/ that explores this.
Meanwhile the rrepublicans have no problem spending billions of dollars to blow up another country or two (sometimes the wrong one for the wrong reason) and then a few more billion to "bring democracy" to the middle east (laughing really hard at that one)...but meanwhile ask for some foodstamps and ooooh noooo we can't afford that. Then to top it all off be sure to not take care of the veterans you sent over there to blow up things and kill people - cause again - we can't afford that.
I'd say it's safe to say our countries leaders have their priorities jacked up. What's even more disgusting is that these bozo's keep getting elected.

Prior to the great depression we didn't have much in the way of social services - we depended upon churches and individual people and other charities to take care of people. Well some problems are so big that only a government can tackle them - or in come cases it's something that people just won't do on their own without being pushed by the government. This is one of those things. We need to government to be part of it - but as you said it would be nice to seem them involved without actually making matters worse.