Wise Words We Have Forgotten

"There is a moral obligation that those who have should give to those who don't...We have a debt to each other, to humanity. Maybe some people don't feel that way. I rather pity them. I think people like that live such an isolated life and don't have the joys of helping, of changing the world little bit."

“As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself, the other for helping others." --Audrey Hepburn

Welfare-bashers say "Let the churches and the private sector help the poor. It's their responsibility, not the government's." 

My answer, "How do you think tending to the poor fell into the lap of the government to begin with?" Because churches and the private sector were not up to the task, either because of greed, tribalism (we only help THESE people) or the sheer enormity of the task. When members of a society do not, will not, or can not take responsibility for moral justice, it is left to the state to step in.

And the larger the income gap between the haves and have-nots, the worse this problem will become. The have-nots have no resources to spare, and the haves not only hoard what they have, but relentlessly go after the rest.

When you get right down to it, most of the welfare-bashers are from the segment of the have-nots that is just high enough not to need help to survive.  They begrudge the poor the barely  sustenance-level "benefits" provided by the government.  Dollars to donuts , the majority of these folks don't give to charity or church.  They follow the example of the 1% and hoard every penny they make, to the point that they rail against the few dollars taken out of their pockets in the form of taxes and used to give a leg up to society's least fortunate.  They stigmatize the poor as lazy moochers in order to justify their cantankerous avarice. 

The 1% aid and abet that notion...in their own quest to get and keep...everything. 

"There is a moral obligation that those who have should give to those who don't." 

Yes.  Yes, there is.