Friedrich --

New, and apparently unpartisan, research shows that very few Brits remain in poverty for their whole lives. In other words, "the underclass" barely exists: here.

Thomas Sowell once made the same point to me about poverty in America -- that very, very few people remain in poverty for all that long. Most people have a bad year or two or five, then pull their lives together and get on with it. The fact is that the percentage of Americans who are the real problem poor isn't the typically-cited 12ish percent, let alone 20ish percent. Instead, it's about 1-2%. Everybody else looks after themselves more than adequately.

Best,

Michael