America the destitute? It’s easy to picture the United States as a Hummer packed full of shopping bags, with supersized sodas in the cupholders and a plasma screen TV poking through the sunroof – a nation whose sins are those of excess. It feels stranger to depict the country as a pauper with its empty pockets pulled inside out.
Yet the idea that Uncle Sam has run out of cash now appears everywhere in public debate. The slogan, ‘We’re broke’ is used to justify an historic shredding of our social safety net.
