[nonford150]

Human nature - it is a b*tch. Let's face it - as you say, most people are looking out for themselves; they rarely, if ever, think about the cashier or stock clerk who's working 3 jobs and still not making it. And it's not a "screw everyone else" sort of attitude, it's more of not even thinking about it because they're absorbed with their own lives.

Only when folks are faced with how such a reality affects them, such as when a company lays them off and they have little marketable skills after toiling away in a throwaway job for 10 years, do they actually give any real consideration to how others live - because they now are facing the same sort of conditions and giant concrete roadblocks.