[marshallp]

There is certain fallacy in that. I've never met a person who has ever thought he would like to mooch off welfare or what have you forever, or even a short amount of time. There are barriers that are difficult to see for many middle class people to see. The choice between welfare and work for many people is not between a welfare and a cubicle writing java code, but between welfare and humiliating treatment or backbreaking work in a restaurant/factory.

Society has sent men to the moon, photographed galaxies billions of light years away, put millions of transistors inside a square inch of sand = we ought to be able to provide better opportunities for the unfortunate.

[dkersten]

I've never met a person who has ever thought he would like to mooch off welfare or what have you forever, or even a short amount of time.

I have. I currently live in a town where, due to the recession, a large percentage of people are living on social welfare. The thing is that a shockingly large number of them (that I know personally) have no ambition to do anything else. Some of these have been on welfare for five years already. I mean, why work when the government will just give you money, right? Another shockingly large number of young couples are having children because they see the extra child benefit money - someone that I know personally who already has two children under the age of four and wants a third one recently said how much easier their life would be with the social welfare benefits of a third child... I'm not sure if they ever considered that 1) children get significantly more expensive as they get older and 2) how unfair it is to the children to bring them into a low income family. But thats besides the point: my main point is that I do, unfortunately, know people who are happy to get handouts and have no ambitions to change any time soon.

[sliverstorm]

we ought to be able to provide better opportunities for the unfortunate

The trade-off of course being that the more growth we experience, the better quality-of-life gets for everybody in the future. On the one hand, everything is way better for most everybody than it was 200 years ago- on the other hand, like that did a whole lot of good for the dirt-poor of 200 years ago.

[nazgulnarsil]

why so much sympathy for the first world poor? because they are visible? I find sympathy for "poor" people living in fantastic conditions morally repugnant. humanity has serious problems to tackle.

[marshallp]

Feeling sympathy for first world poor doesn't mean you can't also feel sympathy for the third world poor.

[nazgulnarsil]

If I have a million dollars I care less about $1. If someone is being tortured I care less about someone working 12 hour days.

utility functions are not linear.