Professor Rank, author of Living on the Edge: The Realities of Welfare in America (1994), meticulously builds the case that, despite America's great wealth, society as a whole has abnegated its responsibility to ease the burdens of the nation's poor even while creating an economic system that structurally ensures that a great portion of its citizens will live in poverty. The author debunks the traditional belief that the poor are largely responsible for their own condition. He equates the economy to a game of musical chairs, with a limited amount of jobs substituting for chairs.  December 25th, 2007, 08:46