Even as someone who grew up well below the poverty line, this wasn’t true ime. The vast majority of adults aren’t impoverished. They’re quite clearly choosing not to work the shitty jobs that would make them impoverished, usually through skills they’ve chosen to acquire.

While I don’t have the stats on what percentage of people exercise job choice — these stats are completely unobtainable - I don’t think there’s an argument that can reasonably suggest it’s >50 (or even 20)

Sure, people can upskill or move across the country, but that's prohibitively expensive and not guaranteed to work. A lot of people are trapped by this.

Also, defense contractors frequently have multiple customers, in a way. First, many contractors sell their stuff to foreign customers (after getting approval from the USG of course, frequently with degraded capabilities). Lots of countries are buying the F-35 for instance. Also, contractors frequently have multiple customers within the government. They might sell to the Air Force and the Army, for instance, or the CIA and the NSA. Those are all different agencies, and act like different customers, without that much coordination between them, and each has its own funding and does its own contracts with contractors.