(Largely, but almost certainly not completely) solving homelessness would also require solving a massive amount of mental health issues. But I still think that fits your argument (one I happen to agree with). If you want your country to be stronger and more productive it seems like basic common sense to (attempt to) solve hunger, education, health, etc. issues, so your citizenry is more prosperous and productive. I can't think of any way in which the 'rising tide lifts all ships' doesn't at least somewhat benefit most citizens of a country, including those already in power.
But of course that requires a significant level of investment, which is generally the limiting factor, as people who build fortunes are generally disinclined to part with any portion of them. Even for those so inclined, it is hard to get people to agree on what the 'greater good' really is, much more so these days when vast amounts of information is thrown at us often seemingly only in service of dividing us.
They do spend a lot of time courting ruby/rails devs, though, so being able to say rubygems is hosted on AWS might be worth throwing them a significant discount.
I have to admit, I default to tables for layout (not a designer, obviously). Hopefully once all of the major browsers support CSS3 (and more specifically CSS tables), this argument will be moot. Of course, the only major browser that doesn't is IE (prior to 8), so we probably have quite a while before IE 6 & 7 disappear from general use.