You see around you, but not necessarily across the entire country. I live in the SF Bay Area and yes, we are booming. CA by GDP is the sixth largest country IN THE WORLD.
Do we have homeless? Yes, because poverty has many causes, most of which aren't being holistically addressed by any government, Repub or Dem. The original increase in homelessness in CA happened when Reagan shut down 90% of the "halfway houses" because "local governments should have the freedom to address the problem directly".
Well, they didn't, and homelessness became a way of life for most of the mentally ill. I have relatives who have schizophrenia or are manic-depressive, and let me tell you, it isn't easy to get them to take their medication. But without it, they really cannot cope with life. My relatives are lucky; they have enough family to grit their teeth and help them out. But many mentally ill do not.
With the majority of the world in recession or nearly so, the US is not going to see a booming domestic economy. We are doing extremely well as we are; most countries are in worse shape. Would you rather be Italian? or Greek? or Brazilian? I doubt it. The French, Germans, English, Japanese and Chinese all are facing serious issues.
The ACA is an unwieldy mess that voters created via the politicians they elected. They let themselves be influenced by misleading soundbites, so why should anyone complain that "ACA doesn't work." Of course it doesn't - it needs to work like Medicare, automatic enrollment of as many as possible.
Otherwise, actuarially IT WILL NEVER WORK. Financial risk has to be spread around as large a pool as possible. It's like income taxes, folks - if you don't have an even playing field for everyone to make them contribute, then the ones who are paying have to pay more to make up for those who profit but don't pay.
As for US debt, it's never been as doomsday as people claim. This isn't like charge card debt. The US actually owes most of its debt to itself, via the Treasury. Other debt needs politicos to have some backbone to raise taxes. SocSec, for example, needs to take off the salary earnings cap so that high-earners pay more of their share.
Deficit #s are overblown to use as soundbites to scare voters. It's similar to the scare articles about 'China suddenly recalling US debt' which are just puffery. China has no reason to cut its own throat by doing so. They are buying less debt for a couple of reasons - for one, they don't own enough gold per percentage to hold in their reserves (most countries hold at least 3-6%; China has less than 2% in gold. The US doesn't release their figures but a rough approximation is 63-75% of our reserves are in gold). For another, the Treasury hasn't had to pay much interest thanks to the mess the European Central Bank made with the euro; foreign debt holders can find higher rates elsewhere (with commensurately higher risk).
Immigrants are a net gain to the economy. That's been shown in numerous studies, and we've certainly seen it in our state.
And of course, when you get right down to it, we are all immigrants, even if my family did arrive here back in the 1880's.
