Songfacts®:

• This song is about homelessness and poverty in America:
  
  Ain't got no job, ain't got no smoke
  Aint got a car, his life's a joke
  
  The subject of the song has apparently lost his job ("Used to call the shots, now he can't connect the dots"), and while he grows despondent looking for a new one, he spends what money he has left on drugs:
  
  He's about to lose his lifeline
  He's looking for the headlines
  Sniffin' up the white lines
  
  Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine could relate: He lived an itinerant youth in poverty and struggled with drug addiction. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Nicholos - Farmville, VA
• Megadeth made a video for "Breadline" using footage of actual homeless people and their hardscrabble environments. Directed by John Richards, they debuted it on their official website, which was a technical challenge in 2000 due to bandwidth restrictions.
  
  Footage from the video was later used in a public service announcement for the National Homeless Coalition.
• Megadeth did their part to help the hungry by supporting America's Second Harvest. They contributed the song "Insomnia" to a compilation called Music 4 Food that was distributed on college campuses in 1999 in exchange for food donations.
• By Megadeth standards, "Breadline" is pretty chill. They mellowed out a bit on the Risk album, getting more melodic, in line with the prevailing sound of modern rock. This didn't go over well with many of their fans.
• Dave Mustaine wrote the song with Megadeth's other guitarist, Marty Friedman, and with their manager, Bud Prager, who helped with the lyrics. Prager was Foreigner's longtime manager before taking on Megadeth.